Ukraine is attacking 'Russia's Amazon', and it could lead to a bigger prize

Strikes on Russia's Largest Online Retailer

Over the past four weeks Ukrainian drones have struck at least 22 facilities belonging to Wildberries, the country's dominant online retailer frequently compared to Amazon. According to reporting by ABC Australia, some warehouses have been destroyed while others have been shuttered or forced to curtail operations after suffering damage. The company sells clothing, electronics, books, groceries and cosmetics from large logistics centres on the outskirts of Russian cities.

Kyiv has accused Wildberries of helping supply President Vladimir Putin's military and has framed the operation as part of a broader 40-day campaign of "long-range sanctions" intended to pressure Russia's economy. Major Robert "Magyar" Brovdi, the Ukrainian commander overseeing drone strategy, was quoted by ABC Australia as saying ordinary Russian consumers had become "addicted" to the platform's convenience and that the attacks would continue. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak warned that the strikes could produce "severe defiscalisation" inside Russia.

ABC Australia reported that Wildberries is estimated to account for roughly 2 percent of Russian GDP. After many Western firms exited following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the retailer expanded rapidly. Its capital expenditure rose 85 percent in 2023 to 52.6 billion rubles, or about 903 million dollars, then climbed to 150 billion rubles in 2024 and reached 310 billion rubles the following year. Russian and Ukrainian media cited by ABC Australia said the company's largest loans came from VTB Bank and Sberbank, both more than 50 percent owned by the Kremlin. Analysts quoted in the same report argued that distress at Wildberries could therefore transmit quickly to state-linked creditors and, ultimately, to public finances.

Cash Outflows and Banking Strain

Parallel to the warehouse attacks, Russian households have been withdrawing large sums from banks. Central-bank figures cited by both the Daily Express and Fortune show nearly 286.4 billion rubles, equivalent to 3.4 billion dollars, leaving the system in the first two weeks of August. That followed 7.3 billion dollars withdrawn in July and 4.5 billion dollars in June, bringing the recent total to roughly 15 billion dollars. Fortune noted that the pace is on track to nearly double the 24.7 billion dollars withdrawn in 2022, the first year of the full-scale war.

A former senior Russian finance official, quoted by the Washington Post and carried by both the Daily Express and Fortune, described the atmosphere: "Drones are flying. Things are burning down. Nervousness is growing. And people’s everyday wisdom may be kicking in that they need to have cash under their pillow and not somewhere in banks where it may never be returned." The official added that some banks had not anticipated the scale of demand and had deployed cash elsewhere. Taras Skvortsov, a senior executive at Sberbank, said many lenders lack sufficient cash on hand to purchase government bonds.

Fortune reported that Russia's budget deficit reached 76 billion dollars by the end of July and that the finance ministry halted bond auctions indefinitely last month amid higher borrowing costs and weak demand. The same outlet said the finance ministry is preparing legislation that could open access to 40 billion dollars in pension savings, while the leader of the Communist Party proposed "mobilising" 130 trillion rubles held in bank accounts. An associate of a Russian billionaire told the Washington Post, as reported by Fortune, that "if the government needs cash, Putin will just do a grab for assets." Last year the state seized 51.5 billion dollars in oligarch assets.

Additional warning signs have accumulated. Fortune cited June 2025 red flags raised by Russian banks over a potential debt crisis, a warning from the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs that many companies faced a "pre-default situation," and a forecast from the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting of a possible banking crisis by October. Sources told Izvestia that nearly 25 percent of the bond market was at risk of default, and a European intelligence assessment earlier this year described Russian lenders as vulnerable because of rising indebtedness. Personal bankruptcies jumped by almost a third last year to more than 500,000.

ABC Australia noted that International Monetary Fund metrics already point to a banking system in crisis and that analysts see the broader economy in or near recession under the combined weight of Western sanctions and war spending. Stephen Hall of the University of Bath explained the dual logic of the Ukrainian campaign: bringing the costs of war home to ordinary Russians while exploiting the heavy indebtedness of key firms.

Human and Operational Impact

The warehouse strikes have carried a human cost. ABC Australia reported that some Wildberries employees have been killed and others injured. Small-business sellers who rely on the platform have expressed alarm on social media; one owner wrote, "Every morning it's terrifying to open the news. People are losing everything." In response, Wildberries updated its contracts to hold sellers liable for stock destroyed by "terrorism."

Company founder Tatyana Kim, in a video address cited by ABC Australia, described the Ukrainian campaign as a "terrorist attack." Russian officials have denied that Wildberries sells military equipment, even though its website has advertised dual-use items such as night-vision goggles and body armour.

Meanwhile, Russia has intensified its own aerial bombardment of Ukrainian infrastructure and cities over the past month, according to ABC Australia. Fortune added that new Ukrainian drone tactics have halted Russian advances on the battlefield, damaged oil infrastructure and pushed casualties above replacement rates. The Russian military is reportedly preparing contingency plans for wider mobilisation, possibly after parliamentary elections—an echo of the September 2022 call-up that triggered a mass exodus of men and sharp rises in property prices in neighbouring Georgia and Armenia.

Competing Assessments of Strategy and Risk

Ukrainian officials present the Wildberries campaign as a calculated effort to impose economic costs without direct confrontation, arguing that the retailer's scale and state-linked financing make it a high-leverage target. Russian authorities and the company itself reject any military connection and cast the strikes as indiscriminate attacks on civilian commerce. Independent analysts, drawing on central-bank data and corporate disclosures, focus less on intent than on transmission channels: heavy corporate debt concentrated at systemically important banks, evaporating deposit bases, and a sovereign borrower already struggling to finance a protracted war. Whether the current outflows harden into a full-scale crisis remains an open question, but the figures already published by the Russian central bank and the physical damage inflicted on logistics hubs have made the pressure visible on both sides of the border.