‘All we could do was watch our merchandise burn’: Russian small business owners respond to losing their stock when Ukrainian drones hit two Wildberries warehouses

On the night of July 18, Ukrainian drones struck two Wildberries warehouses — one outside Moscow and one in the Tambov region. At least eight people were killed and more than 80 injured. One strike hit the company’s major logistics center in Elektrostal, which sent a smoke plume drifting more than 200 kilometers (almost 125 miles) and damaged up to 15 percent of the company’s total warehouse space. Firefighters still hadn’t fully extinguished the blaze a full day later. The fire destroyed merchandise belonging to thousands of sellers along with the facilities themselves. Some sellers estimate their losses in the millions of rubles and are scrambling to find the money to keep their businesses afloat. Bereg spoke with four entrepreneurs whose goods were stored at the Elektrostal warehouse. They discussed the first hours after the fire, the scale of their losses, and their efforts to save their businesses. Meduza is publishing this piece in full.

Alexey

Owner of an electronics store on Wildberries

I found out about the fire almost immediately because I have a friend who works at the warehouse. He called [that night] and said, “They’re hammering us with drones here.” At first I didn’t believe him, then I started checking — and it was true: there had been a drone attack and a fire had broken out. I jumped in my car right away and drove over.

By the time I got there, they weren’t letting anyone through — the area was cordoned off, so all I could do was watch my merchandise burn. I stayed there for about five hours. I saw other sellers, but I didn’t really talk to them. They were panicking too, not knowing what to do, calling people. Everyone was trying every way they could to get their goods out, but none of it worked.

I had a shipment of PlayStation 5 consoles at the warehouse — roughly 210 units. My preliminary estimate puts the losses at around 10 to 12 million rubles at retail value. The exact figure is still being worked out; right now I’m cross-checking my inventory, purchase records, and data on what was actually in the warehouse at the time of the fire.

This is a serious blow to my business: a large shipment I’d sunk working capital into was destroyed. Overall, the business had been profitable — I was able to recoup my investments and gradually scale up, which is why I decided to keep such a large shipment at the warehouse in the first place.

[After the fire at the Elektrostal warehouse] I did put my car up for sale. I plan to use the proceeds from the sale [2.8 million rubles] to buy new inventory so I can get back up to speed and keep operating as quickly as possible. I don’t want to stop selling entirely — quite the opposite, I want to get back to normal operations as fast as I can.

So far I’m managing without loans, and I’m hoping I can keep it that way. Right now the main task is to rebuild my product line and keep working despite everything that’s happened.

The merchandise wasn’t separately insured. As I understand it, there’s an inquiry underway [with Wildberries] right now, so it’s too early to draw final conclusions. Of course, I’m hoping Wildberries assigns responsibility properly and that sellers get compensated for their losses. There are still open questions about the compensation itself and when it might arrive.

I can’t say for certain why this particular warehouse was targeted — that’s for the relevant authorities to determine. But if I had to reason it out, a major warehouse is a key logistics hub that huge volumes of goods pass through, and thousands of sellers depend on it running. So striking it inflicts economic damage and disrupts supply chains — and it draws plenty of public attention too. That’s just my own guess as an affected seller. I can’t say anything more [about whether the Ukrainian military’s strikes on Wildberries warehouses are justified].

Arina

Owner of a women’s clothing brand, in-house production

We’ve been in the clothing business since 2023, and in business overall since 2020 — before that we had a different venture. We had about 1,135 items at the Elektrostal warehouse. We haven’t calculated the exact losses yet, but we’re talking more than 600,000 rubles.

I read about the fire on the morning of [July 18] in Telegram channels. At first it wasn’t clear whether the warehouse had burned down completely. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened: there was a fire at an Ozon warehouse before, then one at a Wildberries warehouse in Shushary. We had goods there too, but we didn’t lose much stock in those earlier fires, so we didn’t take out any loans.

Once it became clear the Elektrostal warehouse was going to burn down completely, there was this feeling of yet another letdown. It was very unpleasant. I’ll refrain from answering why Elektrostal specifically [was hit by the drones].

We used to be able to turn a profit on Wildberries. We work in the mass-market segment, and back in 2023, that kind of product was sold online almost exclusively on Wildberries, which is why we chose that platform.

But as of July 2026, the math just doesn’t work anymore. They raised the commission to 43.5 percent, and with other fees on top of that, the marketplace ends up taking around 70 percent of an item’s price. The remaining 30 percent has to cover production costs, taxes, and so on. So it’s become very difficult to make a product that’s both good quality and affordable.

At this point, it seems like selling through our own website would actually be more profitable: the price for customers could be lower than on Wildberries, and we, as producers, could in theory earn more.

We’d already started working out a strategy for leaving Wildberries and moving to our own site before the fire. But it’s not easy to exit a platform quickly and attract customers on your own. We’re in the middle of that process now and seeing how it goes.

I don’t think we should count on compensation from the company. Not anytime soon, anyway. This could drag on for years. How will they even calculate the compensation? Nothing is known yet.

We’re only counting on ourselves — the platform sets terms that are pushing us to leave, and that has nothing to do with the warehouses burning down. For us as business owners, the critical blow was the 10-percentage-point commission hike that took effect July 7. We were only notified about it on July 1.

The items we had planned for fall and the ones we’d been selling before don’t turn any profit at all under a commission like that.

Olga

Owner of a business selling children’s craft kits

We’re still calculating the exact size of our losses. We found out about the fire from seller chats. Then I opened Instagram, and the news was the first thing I saw. My first reaction was shock: a new shipment was actually supposed to be delivered to that warehouse that very day. I immediately wrote to fulfillment to find out whether any employees had been hurt, since deliveries there happen at night too.

It was terrifying watching footage of the fire and reading about the people who died. The sheer scale of what happened was stunning.

After that, we logged all our remaining inventory across our warehouses and saved the records. We also arranged to move goods to other warehouses, since a significant share of our stock was in Elektrostal and Kotovsk.

None of our obligations have gone away, though. We still have to pay our suppliers and the fulfillment center, cover new purchases, and pay off loans. I can’t say yet how long it’ll take to make up for the losses — it depends on a lot of factors.

I can’t say anything [about the idea that the Ukrainian military struck the warehouses in retaliation for Russian attacks on “Nasha Pochta”].

Tatiana

Owner of a women’s clothing brand

We have our own production, and that’s actually what burned in the fire. At cost [our losses] come to 2 million rubles, but factoring in future profit, it’s 6 million.

We’ve been in business since 2024, and Wildberries is our main sales channel.

My husband found out [about the drone attack] from the news and told me in the morning. We were in shock, of course — there was a feeling of despair. Then [we realized] we’d manage somehow, since we still have goods at other warehouses. The hard part is that we, like everyone else, have taxes and loans to pay — and then this happens on top of it. We’re still in shock, honestly.

We’ll probably never get any compensation — for now it’s just promises.

The business used to be profitable overall — our margins are good. We produce everything ourselves, and that’s what let us [turn a profit]. But Wildberries raising its commissions is definitely making things harder.

For now we’re planning to keep selling on Wildberries — we still have stock at other warehouses — but we won’t be sewing anything new before the end of summer. We’re also going to look at other platforms; Lamoda is one of the near-term options.

[Without compensation] we won’t have the money for production, or we’ll have to take out another loan — and we’d really rather not, since we’re already in debt. So the only option left is to try to get at least some of the money back through the courts.