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50B rubles in damage, up to 15% of its warehouse space, and a contract clause that shifts the loss onto small vendors: inside Ukraine’s strike on Russia’s online retail giant, Wildberries (meduza.io)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/ukraine@sopuli.xyz
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...the fires destroyed thousands, or even tens of thousands, of items belonging to sellers who work through Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer. Very rough, preliminary estimates put the damage at more than 50 billion rubles. Up to 15% of the company’s total warehouse space may have been affected...

Social media users have pointed out that Wildberries does in fact sell war-related goods, including body armor, combat helmets, camouflage uniforms, and fiber-optic cable for drones...

The Kotovsk warehouse opened in late May 2025 and plays an important role in regional logistics. The center can store up to 54 million items. At the opening, Kim said:

"Building a logistics center in Tambov Oblast will help optimize existing routes, significantly reduce costs and transit times for transportation, storage, and delivery of goods. In addition, having a logistics center will help local entrepreneurs develop small and medium-sized businesses by giving them the ability to store, distribute, and ship goods to other cities."

...In early July, Wildberries added a clause to its seller agreement exempting the company from any liability in the event of a drone attack. The amendment took effect on July 7 — 11 days before Ukraine’s strike on the warehouses...

"Today it wasn’t just goods that burned. Another illusion burned — that someone would protect entrepreneurs. The rules are changing. The risks are being shifted onto us. The losses are becoming ours too. It’s only going to get worse. Something urgently needs to change, radically."

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[–] 27 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This explains the video I saw earlier with some extremely upset Russian beauty influencer saying that things have gone just entirely too far. Although apparently she was just fine with the war until the warehouse storing her beauty influencer items was hit.

I was slightly confused by the line in the article that said

Wildberries [recently] added a clause to its seller agreement exempting the company from any liability in the event of a drone attack

because surely they would have a clause so they wouldn't have to pay out for acts of war.

And then I remembered that this isn't a war, it's a special military operation, and the courts would undoubtedly agree that this is not a war. So the new clause makes sense.

Also, there's an update in the article noting that

although Wildberries is not obligated to compensate sellers for lost goods, the company is already determining the scale of payments to sellers and other forms of financial support. [The head of the company] valso said the families of those killed in the attack would receive 2 million rubles, and the seriously injured 1 million.

If they follow through on these promises in a meaningful way, then the head of Wildberries is a much better person than Jeff Bezos.

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