Drone warfare, the tactic of using remotely piloted aircraft to strike targets without ground troops present, has reached Russia's domestic retail sector. Wildberries, the country's biggest online retailer, has come under attack as part of the Ukraine conflict. Nine people have been killed in the strikes, and small merchants who sell through the platform say losses are running into the millions of roubles.
A marketplace, not a single store
Wildberries functions as a marketplace. It earns by hosting the storefronts of independent small sellers rather than owning all the goods it sells. That structure matters because financial damage from an attack does not stay on Wildberries' own ledger.
When the warehouses and logistics the platform provides are hit, sellers lose inventory they cannot ship. Revenue stops. The millions of roubles in losses belong to those small merchants, and few small businesses have a way to recover costs from strikes that were never part of the risk they priced into selling online.
Retail infrastructure enters the conflict
The Ukraine drone campaign has expanded before in what it chooses to target. Hitting Wildberries adds a category that is civilian and commercial in the plainest sense. This is not a fuel depot or a military logistics hub. It is where small businesses store goods for home delivery.
Nine people have been killed. For the sellers still operating through the platform, losses are already measured in millions of roubles.
The source is limited to the confirmed facts above. No further figures, dates, or locations were available at the time of publication.