Drone strikes on Russia's "Amazon": the story of Wildberries
Following a series of systematic drone strikes on Russian oil refineries and tankers in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, Ukraine has expanded its campaign to target Russia's logistics infrastructure. Since last week, warehouses belonging to Russia's largest online marketplace, Wildberries, have come under what Ukraine describes as "long-range sanctions".
While the company's founder, billionaire Tatyana Kim, has portrayed the attacks as targeting "regular people", and Wildberries sellers have complained about financial losses and strikes on "civilian sites", the marketplace has long been a major player in supporting both the Russian military and the country's wider economy – supplying everything from body armour, combat helmets and fibre-optic cable for drones to helping circumvent Western sanctions.
How did Wildberries grow into Russia's equivalent of Amazon? Why are the strikes on its logistics centres being described as retaliation for attacks on Nova Poshta (Nova Post), Ukraine's largest private postal operator? And what is the estimated scale of the damage?