Russia destroys civilian infrastructure and kills innocent people in Ukraine, but was sincerely outraged when the Ukrainians destroyed its largest warehouses for online commerce. Ivan Preobrazhensky explains why they are a legitimate target.
After the attacks on oil refineries and fuel cargoes, Ukraine also struck a facility in Russia that is directly related to the conduct of the war - the warehouses of the Wildberries company. Russia is outraged that "civilian targets" were attacked, as if it itself does not strike residential buildings in Ukrainian cities every day. And it seems that her position is also being understood abroad - not only inside Russia.
Timely force majeure
The strikes by Ukrainian drones on warehouses, including those belonging to the largest Russian e-commerce site Wildberries, immediately caused a scandal in Russia, which is only indirectly related to the war. When the company itself and the numerous suppliers of the destroyed goods began to calculate the losses, it became clear that about two weeks before the attacks, the far-sighted managers of Wildberries had updated the concept of force majeure in the company's obligations, in the event of which it would owe nothing to anyone, adding military risks, i.e. drone strikes.
The formal head of the site, Tatyana Kim, quite quickly began to reassure sellers that they would be paid reasonable compensation, the assessment of which would take about a month. As it turned out - there is no insurance. The version of the Wildberries management is that the sellers of the goods burned in the warehouses, the value of which could reach 150 billion rubles, should be happy that they will receive any compensation at all, since in principle no one owes them anything. But hardly anyone assumes that the company with a net profit of about 175 billion rubles in 2025 will agree to give it all - and without guarantees that the strikes will not be repeated, which would lead to demands for new payments.
Is the dissatisfaction fair?
Critics of Wildberries' behavior logically recall facts from what is known about this company. For example, the fact that earlier two powerful clans - Chechen and Dagestan - fought for control over it. Ramzan Kadyrov, who defended the rights of the husband of Wildberries founder Tatyana Kim (and, as many suspect, his hidden investments in the company), turned out to be the losing party. Control, in connection with which there were direct clashes in the center of Moscow with wounded and killed, eventually fell into the hands of the Dagestan senator Suleiman Kerimov, to whom the Chechen leader even declared a bloody revenge, and the Kremlin had to reconcile them almost with the mediation of the UAE.
Respectively, the bigwigs who took control of the almost monopolist of the Russian online trading market could reach into their pockets, some critics believe. Besides, it is no secret that there is money.
According to media reports, in March of this year, the same Kerimov voluntarily agreed to provide the state (or the war) with 100 billion rubles - more than half of the losses of small and medium-sized businesses trading through Wildberries. Before that, Kerimov generously gave another 400 million dollars to the musician Sergei Roldugin, who is close to Vladimir Putin. By the way, this same cellist turned out to be the owner of one of the warehouses attacked by Ukrainian drones. This brings us back to the main topic - the war and the supposedly "civilian" targets.
Part of Russian propaganda
Reading the outraged posts of Russian businessmen and the articles in the courtly Russian media, we can understand the following: Ukrainian drones attacked warehouses associated with sponsors and organizers of the war. And again, we learn from them that among the burned goods there were many with a direct military purpose: from night vision devices to the most banal uniforms, which it is known that many military personnel and their relatives buy themselves so as not to wear the rags that are given to those mobilized to fight at the front. According to the Ukrainian military, the warehouses are also used by the Russian army.
Is this a legitimate goal, considering that on the same days the Russian military completely destroyed a warehouse that, among other things, stored body armor, and the number of strikes on facilities and warehouses of the Ukrainian "Nova Poshta" - the logistics company that is a leader in the field of express deliveries in Ukraine - is even difficult to count.
The conclusion is extremely simple. The fabrications of Russian propaganda should not be replicated. Ukraine continues to try to attack these facilities, which are clearly military targets. And this is the happiness of "ordinary Russians", who often spread the lies of Peskov, RT and the Russian Foreign Ministry on social networks.