In a recent wave of mass-scale drone attacks, Ukraine has began to target the largest e-commerce network in Russia – Wildberries. Wildberries is often dubbed the ‘Russian Amazon’.
Here is last night’s (22nd of July) attack on the Wildberries Krasnodar warehouse complex.
The facility has an area of approximately 150,000m² and employs 5,000 people. Krasnodar is 1,366 kilometres (850 miles) from Moscow and 300km (190 miles) from the border with Ukraine. It is the 4th largest of its kind in the country.
The complex is located on the outskirts of the city of Krasnodar which has a population of 1.2 million people. Krasnodar is a big, important and famous city in Russia.
In the same mass-drone assault, Ukraine also hit Wildberries warehouse facilities in the city of Nevinnomyssk. Nevinnomyssk has a population of 110,000 people and is situated 300km (185 miles) from Krasnodar.
A few days prior to the attacks above, on the night of the 20th of July, three sites were hit.
The Wildberries logistics centre in the city of Elektrostal located in the Moscow region was struck. This is a massive operation and is among the largest company storage and logistics facilities in the whole of Russia at 250,000m² to 360,000m² depending on the source and how it’s measured. It has a workforce of approximately 5,000 and can store 200 million items.
Two lesser but similarly large-scale warehouse centres were targeted on the same night, in Podolsk (Moscow Oblast), and in Kotovsk, 430km southeast of Moscow.
Overall, this represents somewhere in the region of 850,000m² of logistical space where around 20,000 people work.
More important than this is the loss of human life and the impact on the civilian population.
So far, and these are ongoing incidents with new information coming to light as they develop, these are the figures for those killed and injured.
Kotovsk: 7 killed and 25 injured.
Nevinnomyssk: 5 injured.
Elektrostal: 40 to 61 injured. A person may or may not have been killed.
Krasnodar: 1 killed and 10 injured.
Podolsk: I can find no consistent and reliable casualty information specific to the attack that did not overlap with the wider Moscow-region strikes.
Keep in mind that the dead and injured were and are civilian employees working at the warehouses of a private company; we are not talking about soldiers or military installations or even the sorts of industries essential for the waging of war.
Why Wildberries?
Wildberries is Russia’s largest e-commerce company and one of the biggest companies in the country. It is often called the ‘Russian Amazon’. It makes 6.1 trillion roubles ($68 billion) in annual sales and occupies a total combined area of 5.2 million square metres in terms of its facilities and storage warehouses. It works with over one million merchants, the majority of these being small and medium-sized businesses for whom Wildberries is essential for sales and distribution. It processes in excess of 20 million orders a day. It is also a major investor in others spheres of the economy.
In short, it’s a big deal as a company.
More than this however, it occupies a singularly unique position in Russian society. It is just as known as companies like Gazprom, Rosneft and Lukoil, but it is far more visible and immediate for the vast majority of citizens than such fossil fuel giants. Sberbank is just as visible and immediate, more so in fact, but the state bank with all its seriousness and exactitude is worlds apart from the sort of informal feel of a business like Wildberries.
This is the reason why Ukraine has targeted it. The attacks both scare the population in a very visible way an disrupt daily life in a very tangible way.
The goal of Zelenskiy’s 40-day influence operation is to ‘influence the aggressor state in order to compel it to end to the war.’
By means of deep, constant and unpredictable drone assaults on sites of various types right across the western part of the Russian Federation – in what is now essentially guerilla drone warfare – Ukraine hopes to both scare the civilian population and to disrupt life to a point where Putin will be forced to agree to an end to the war and, in theory, to a peace deal more amenable to Zelenskiy and his Government.
This is the essence of the 40-day operation and this is why Wildberries specifically has been targeted: psychological terror and social disruption.
Will It Work?
In short – yes and no.
As discussed in my recent analysis of what has changed in the Russo-Ukrainian War, it will be effective in a certain limited sense.
Putin admitted a few weeks ago that Ukraine has caused real problems in the form of fuel disruptions with its attacks, albeit he also stressed that the severity has been overstated.
The same will be true for the Wildberries attacks.
The goal of Zelenskiy’s 40-day gambit – the goal of terrorism in general – is the creation of something scary enough before the general population that a state can be pushed into changing its policies. It is an essential weapon in the toolkit of oppressed peoples in their struggles for freedom and independence, where we may no longer call it terrorism, as it is the bread and butter of myriad species of radicals and extremists, where it is nothing other than the manufacture of terror for the ends of a lunatic.
The influence operation will achieve certain theatrical objectives.
It will look good for many that make up the collective western public. It will likewise look good for the European Powers most especially. This will also aid the latter in pushing their peoples to consent to ever-more military aid for Ukraine in their never-ending drive for war in perpetuity with Russia.
It will look scary to Russian society because it is scary. Attacking Wildberries warehouses and apartment buildings is a very different thing to striking military installations and industrial sites.
The problem for Ukraine here is that Russian society, perhaps more than any other, has a long and proven history of coming together during times of troubles to act as one and make the necessary sacrifices for the common good. Much of Russian society already believes that Putin and his Government must hit Ukraine far harder, to end the war and to scare the West into finally pulling back from the brink. The Wildberries drone attacks will only amplify the calls for an intensification of Russia’s strikes on Kiev and other cities ever further.
This is the unusual dynamic Ukraine is faced with: be too effective in your drone campaign and it may just well be wholly countereffective. If Ukraine hits Russia too well and too hard, Russia might just hit back fivefold.
Then there are the fronts – the eastern front of Donetsk and Lugansk and the southern front of Zaporozhzhia and Kherson. The spectacle of Wildberries’ warehouses on fire and conflagrations at oil depots does nothing to change the theatre of war where most questions are being decided.
Ukraine is holding out in Zaporozhzhia and Kherson more or less, for now. It has already lost all of Lugansk and most of Donetsk. Basic logic and proven reality tell us that the balance of power can and will only ineluctably move in one direction and that everything gets worse for Ukraine the longer the war continues.
Zelenskiy would be far better off standing back to appreciate the limits of the possible and the impossible. Zelenskiy would be far better off putting all his energies into doing what’s right for his people rather than doing things that may get more of them killed. That he remains hellbent on forcing his people to fight until the last Ukrainian man is dead in a war that cannot be won and one that is clearly being waged for the interests of foreign powers says that the King of Kiev is either completely mad or extremely bad.
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I recall Putin saying some weeks ago that Russia has nowhere to retreat to.
That worried me. I just wish the West would stop poking him.
First of all, excellent work as usual Shane.☺️👏👍😀 You are truly one of the best writers out there in a world where we're surrounded by a Western media that pretend to be pro-Ukraine while they gladly contemplate sending thousands of more Ukrainians to their death.
One little thing i would add is I'm not sure if Ukraine/the West are doing this because it's a plan or more because the Russians have stopped them everywhere else.
They're problems with this drone campaign which may explain why the army demanded that Federov was sacked. Firstly it takes resources from the front. But most importantly it removes the moral high ground. Russia's now got the 'freedom' to hit back big time and they have.
The problem with Zelensky is he'd rather use up the last Ukrainian and stay in power. It's always someone else's fault like Syrski.
I could go on all day but i think I've said enough lol.😀 One last thing, I recommend checking up people like Alex Mercouris. He's always got a good summary. Loads others too.
Great work as always mate😀👍👏☺️