Ukraine, Seeking To Bring War to Every Russian, Torches ‘Russia’s Amazon’

To bring the war home to each and every Russian, Ukraine is torching warehouses of Russia’s Amazon. Over the last week, drones have burnt seven warehouses of Russia’s largest online retailer, Wildberries.Controlling 40 percent of Russia’s booming e-commerce, Wildberries became a huge success over the last decade, racking up 20 million orders a day across Russia and much of the former Soviet Union. With Amazon kept out of the market due to sanctions, Wildberries has thousands of pickup points across Russia, ranging from megacities to rural villages.The founder and chief executive of Wildberries, Tatyana Kim, is now Russia’s richest woman. A Korean by ancestry, Ms. Kim is building Wildberries Tower, a 75-story skyscraper projected to be Moscow’s tallest building.Last week, this go-go growth took a body blow as Ukrainian long-range drones set off spectacular fires, destroying or damaging about 6 million square feet of warehouse space, about 20 percent of the company’s total. President Volodymyr Zelensky said his drones attacked Russia’s pillar of e-commerce because Wildberries sells dual-purpose goods that can help the Russian army — drones, body armor, helmets, navigation equipment, and camouflage clothing. Citing another reason, he also posted on Telegram: “It is entirely fair that we are bringing the war back home — to Russia.”Agreement comes from the man who sent the drones, the Unmanned Systems Forces commander, Major Robert “Madyar” Brovdi. Just as Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries have forced 50 million Russian car owners to wait in long lines for gasoline, now 100 million Russians face hurdles to fulfill their online desires.Cars line up at a Lukoil gas station at Moscow on June 30, 2026. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP“Drones into Wildberries is not about fires,” Major Brovdi posted on Telegram. “It is about the destruction in one second of the illusion of a well-fed peaceful life of the submissive biomass of the aggressor state — striking at the most sensitive part of the comfort zone of ordinary imperial patriots and supporters of Putin.”Yesterday’s shakeup of Ukraine’s defense leadership seems to reinforce Major Brovdi’s strategy. The new acting defense minister, Yevhenii Khmara, directed some of Ukraine’s most spectacular long range drone attacks while he ran special operations for Ukraine’s Security Service. His emerging team is dominated by younger officers who favor drone warfare. Mr. Zelensky has said drones now account for up to 95 percent of Russian military casualties.Although smoke from the warehouse fires is visible from space, Russia’s state TV ignored yesterday’s torching of two huge Wildberries warehouses. Reflecting government impotence, Russia recently imposed penalties for posting images of damage caused by Ukrainian drones. However, in a 21st century version of Soviet-era samizdat, the Russian Internet fills today with videos of spectacular warehouse fires.Ms. Kim thrived under the Putin regime, but clearly, she can think independently. Two weeks ago, she rewrote contracts with her 1 million sellers to exempt Wildberries from such force majeure events as drone attacks. From left, the acting minister of defense, Major General Yevhen Khmara; the former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi; President Volodymyr Zelensky; and the new commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Mykhailo Drapatyi, at Kyiv, July 22, 2026. Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via APReflecting general Russian nervousness about Ukraine’s drone onslaught, Russia’s main stock index, the MOEX, has dropped by 20 percent over the last two months. Last year, online sales in Russia rose 28 percent, hitting the equivalent of $147 billion, according to Russia’s Association of Internet Trade Companies.Forbes Russia estimates that damages to stocks stored in Wildberries warehouses are near $4 billion. Wildberries seller chat groups are filled with complaints from small business people who say they now face bankruptcy.“Most of my inventory is gone, but the taxes, salaries and obligations to manufacturers and our teams remain,” businesswoman Alisa Goldberg said in an Instagram post. Another seller, identified only as Anastasia, lamented on Instagram: “I am bankrupt. Just yesterday I was an entrepreneur, and today I am bankrupt. My entire clothing collection has burned down.” At a northeast Moscow suburb, Mytishchi, a 32-year-old businessman committed suicide after losing goods at a Wildberries warehouse at Electrostal, 40 miles away. He had borrowed $150,000 to buy goods. Last weekend his inventory turned to ash.Little sympathy can be found among Ukrainians. According to a Kyiv Post survey posted yesterday, Russian drones and missiles have burned hundreds of Ukrainian government post offices, more than 400 depots of the country’s leading private package delivery company, Nova Poshta, and millions of square feet of warehouses and shopping centers. For Major Brovdi, payback time is now. “We will fill that entire vast country called Russia with terror and fear of our presence,” he promised Irish journalist Caolan Robertson in an interview posted Tuesday. “My one message for this failed excuse of a country is this: the life they had before the war is never coming back.”

Ukraine, Seeking To Bring War to Every Russian, Torches ‘Russia’s Amazon’

Ukraine, Seeking To Bring War to Every Russian, Torches ‘Russia’s Amazon’

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