Ukraine’s strikes on Russia’s Wildberries ‘aren’t about the front line’
The company dubbed Russia’s Amazon has come under heavy attacks in Russia as Kyiv tries to bring the sense of war home. Many have compared Wildberries , Russia’s largest online retailer, to Amazon, and some claim that, as in the case of the US company, shopping on its website or app feels addictive. “I know many people that are really addicted to it,” Aleksandra, an accountant and mother in the Urals Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest, told Al Jazeera, withholding her last name for security purposes. “They add things to their basket, wait for discounts, make up their minds about what to buy, then decide to buy it again.” She found the site particularly useful while briefly living in the countryside, where otherwise she would have had to travel to the nearest town for shopping. Mere hours after being interviewed by Al Jazeera, Ukrainian drones hit a Wildberries warehouse in Yekaterinburg, 2,087km (1,297 miles) from the Ukrainian border. The abundance of the retailer’s offers attracts shoppers.
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According to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, “Strikes on Wildberries aren’t about the front line, but about Kyiv’s conception of how Russia’s economy functions and what social and political consequences of these strikes are.” In the years after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many Russians “really stopped going to shops” after switching to Wildberries, said Aleksandra. Ukrainian officials call the strikes retaliation for years-long Russian attacks on Ukraine’s postal offices, energy infrastructure, hospitals and apartment buildings that killed thousands and left millions without electricity and heating. The company said that “orders were temporarily limited” in Yekaterinburg, and regional Governor Denis Pasler said none of its 800 employees there was hurt during an evacuation.
