Tatiana Kim built Wildberries, an online business modelled on the US multinational Amazon, in Russia. She has also kept well in step with the country’s wartime politics, and finally prevailed in a bitter business dispute with her ex-husband, the father of her seven children — a dispute that led to deadly gunfire near Moscow’s Red Square. Kim, co-founder of the online shopping platform Wildberries, is Russia’s richest woman. But the war has now put her entire business empire under threat, as Ukraine destroys her firm’s facilities one after another in air strikes.
After months of striking Russia’s oil refineries to create a nationwide fuel crisis, Ukraine has now intensified attacks on Wildberries’ warehouses. At least 23 of the firm’s facilities across Russia have been hit, struck almost nightly since mid-July, burning billions of dollars of goods and killing nine of the firm’s workers. These attacks add a new dimension to the Russia-Ukraine war, as it is the first time Ukraine has systematically targeted a private company. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to bring the war’s impact home to ordinary Russians, hoping that as discontent and suffering grow in Russian society, pressure on President Vladimir Putin to end the war will grow too. Ukraine claims about 10% of Russia’s total retail sales go through Wildberries, and Kyiv considers the firm a legitimate target because it supplies goods to Russian troops.
In a video message late last month, Tatiana Kim condemned the attacks as terrorist attacks, arguing that the goods sold on Wildberries are the same as those available on Amazon or China’s Alibaba. “There is no logic, common sense or reason in terrorists’ actions, nor can there be,” she said, adding that the enemy wanted to create pressure, instability and panic among vast numbers of people. The attacks are hitting Russia’s retail market as well as Wildberries, at a time when the economy is already troubled — though the damage remains far smaller than the vast destruction Russia has wrought in Ukraine. The research arm of the state-owned Russian bank Sberindex reported that non-food purchases on online platforms like Wildberries have fallen markedly in recent weeks, attributed to Ukraine’s air strikes. By the count of the Moscow-based e-commerce consultancy Data Insight, Ukraine’s attacks have destroyed about a third of Wildberries’ warehouses and about 480 billion roubles ($5.9 billion) worth of goods. “Wildberries’ biggest warehouses are nearly finished,” Data Insight analyst Sergei Semko said. “One warehouse is being deliberately destroyed each day.”
Wildberries’ future depends largely on how long Ukraine’s attacks continue and how quickly and effectively Kim can rework the firm’s supply chain, as well as how much support she can extract from the Russian government. Born into a Russian family and of Korean descent, Tatiana Kim was an English teacher. She founded Wildberries in 2004 with her husband Vladislav Bakalchuk, initially selling clothes from various European firms. Over the years Wildberries became an important part of Russia’s consumer economy, with about 95,000 pickup points nationwide; more than half of Russians shopped from it at least once a month. Its importance grew further after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, as many Western firms left the Russian market.
In 2024 Kim merged Wildberries with a Russian advertising firm — a deal thought to have been brokered by the Russian government. Kim’s husband alleged it was a “corporate takeover”. At one point Bakalchuk turned up at Wildberries’ Moscow office with a group of armed Chechens, and two people were killed and seven injured in the ensuing gunfire. The couple divorced the following year. Having overcome that crisis, the 50-year-old Kim’s business now faces a bigger one, and she is trying to change its model quickly. In her video message Kim said Wildberries was spreading out its supply chain and rebuilding its rapid-delivery infrastructure, and in an online post on Thursday said the firm was meeting regional governments and sellers, with major support also being arranged by the central government. Wildberries has already given voluntary financial help in two rounds to more than 80,000 small and medium businesses, and has launched limited insurance so sellers whose goods are damaged in drone attacks can be compensated. Russian deputy finance minister Alexei Sazanov said this week the government too was arranging support for Wildberries’ sellers, including tax breaks and extra time to make certain payments.
Though sellers get some relief, Wildberries’ employees are increasingly anxious about their safety. A 24-year-old Wildberries worker in St Petersburg, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety, said he had been terrified during Ukrainian drone attacks on the firm’s warehouses in his area, and decided to quit after his warehouse and another near his home were hit — even though he had liked the job. Independent traders who sell through Wildberries are also worried. Katerina Kordik, 44, sold clothing and jewellery brought from Asia; her business was going so well it supported a five-member family. In Ukraine’s first strike on a Wildberries warehouse near Moscow last month, about a third of Katerina’s stock was destroyed, the priciest being handmade jewellery. She had more goods elsewhere but could not retrieve them as warehouse after warehouse was hit. This week a Wildberries warehouse in Tula, south of Moscow, was struck, destroying half of Katerina’s remaining goods. Of about 2,000 items, she said, only 100 are now left to sell. She was so devastated that, for the first time in her life, she had to seek a psychiatrist’s help. “If you live in a country at war, it is unrealistic to expect that at some point the war will not affect your life too,” she said, adding that she was trying to take the situation as a lesson.
Kim also has to handle pressure from competitors. E-commerce observers say many Wildberries sellers are now moving to Ozon, Russia’s second-largest online shopping platform, whose supply chain is comparatively more dispersed and which Ukraine has not so far singled out. Still, Wildberries is operating normally in many places; a former official said its supply chain and IT infrastructure are so advanced that the firm will not shut down just because a few warehouses are damaged or destroyed. Ukraine has alleged that Wildberries sells various goods usable for military purposes, including drone parts and navigation equipment. Kim has condemned the attacks as attacks on peace-loving people, and Wildberries’ own policy clearly bans the sale of weapons and military equipment. But many supporters and family members of Russian troops are reported to have bought bulletproof clothing, helmets and other gear from the site, and drones and other goods usable on the battlefield are also available. A New York Times review found that drones controllable via a live camera feed were still on sale on Wildberries in early August, some with the means to carry explosives, along with rolls of fibre-optic cable for controlling drones. One advertisement offered a drone fitted with an explosive-drop mechanism; in the ad’s Q&A section some buyers questioned its legality, while others asked whether bulk discounts were available, and some specified which Russian military unit they wanted the drones for. Using a derogatory Russian term for Ukrainian soldiers, one buyer wrote: “The drone is good, it can take out the Ukrainians.” The New York Times could not confirm whether any of these drones were actually bought or shipped. Another prospective buyer asked whether the drone could be used in Russia’s so-called “special military operation”, or the Ukraine war; the seller replied: “Hello, yes.”
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