Ukraine’s strike on Russian retail giant Wildberries’ warehouses may have cost sellers at least 150 billion rubles

Overnight on July 18, Ukraine attacked two warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online marketplace, citing the fact that drone components were stored there. Eight people were killed and more than 80 were injured. The total damage to the warehouses and the goods stored in them remains unknown. Tallying it will take at least a month. However, Forbes (and before that Kommersant and Vedomosti) tried, with the help of experts, to estimate how much Wildberries and its sellers may have lost. The conclusion: the sellers’ losses are far greater than the marketplace’s own losses, and the odds of obtaining full compensation from the platform are slim.

How much Wildberries may have lost

The Ukrainian military’s strike hit two Wildberries warehouses: one in Elektrostal, outside Moscow — a 250,000-square-meter (2.7-million-square-foot) facility and one of the company’s largest logistics centers — and another in Kotovsk, in the Tambov region, a 108,000-square-meter (1.2-million-square-foot) warehouse that opened only last year.

Experts estimate the Elektrostal and Kotovsk warehouses accounted for 6.5% to 9% of Wildberries’ total warehouse space. Losing them won’t paralyze the marketplace’s operations, though it could strain its logistics network. Customers are unlikely to see significantly longer delivery times, since Wildberries operates numerous sorting centers that let it reroute shipments quickly.

Sources cited by the Russian business daily Kommersant and the business magazine Forbes Russia say rebuilding the warehouses could cost 60,000 to 100,000 rubles per square meter — a total of 22 billion to 36 billion rubles. For comparison, Wildberries reported a net profit of 175 billion rubles in 2025.

Whether the warehouses that burned were insured remains unknown. Market participants say Wildberries typically doesn’t insure its facilities, but the company can likely absorb the damage on its own even without coverage — especially if the attack on the Elektrostal and Kotovsk warehouses doesn’t cause a serious, prolonged disruption to its logistics operations.

Wildberries appears to be moving quickly to restore its lost warehouse space. The Kotovsk warehouse — where seven people died in the fire, though the blaze itself was put out faster — will resume operations on July 23, five days after the attack. Whether the Elektrostal warehouse will reopen remains unclear; the fire there wasn’t fully extinguished until the evening of July 21.

How much sellers may have lost

A Wildberries warehouse in the village of Shushary, in the Leningrad region, burned down in 2024, and the company compensated sellers whose goods were stored there with 35 billion rubles at the time. The damage this time is far greater. Sergei Semko, an analyst at the research agency Data Insight, told Forbes Russia that sellers’ unsold inventory in the Elektrostal and Kotovsk warehouses could be worth 150 billion to 235 billion rubles, with a “cautious range of 150 billion to 170 billion rubles.”

Wildberries isn’t formally required to compensate sellers for the damage. On July 7 — 11 days before the attack — the company changed its contract terms with sellers, exempting itself from liability for “force majeure circumstances,” a category that now includes drone attacks.

It’s unknown how many sellers who stored goods in the Elektrostal and Kotovsk warehouses accepted the new terms. Those who did have minimal odds of winning in court, according to attorney Konstantin Stepanov. Sellers who didn’t accept the new terms, or who delivered goods to the warehouses before the terms took effect, have better odds, though Stepanov said there’s no guarantee either way. Andrei Sharkov, managing partner at the law firm Shagi, said that even before the contract change, a court would likely have recognized a direct drone strike as a force majeure event under the Civil Code. Still, Sharkov said sellers could win partial compensation if they can prove in court that Wildberries failed to take adequate measures to protect their goods.

Kirill Agapov, managing partner at Umbrella Consulting Group, said that for Wildberries, compensation is a matter of reputation as much as money, which may explain why the marketplace promised to help the warehouse attack’s victims and offered support measures to sellers. For sellers, though, that support amounts to discounts, a temporary suspension of fines, and help with loans, not direct compensation. Forbes Russia said sellers shouldn’t count on Wildberries fully reimbursing them for the value of their destroyed goods: if the 150 billion to 170 billion ruble estimate is accurate, Wildberries would have to spend almost all of last year’s profit on compensation.

Insurance is unlikely to help either. Wildberries sellers have access to insurance programs, but those mainly cover the loss, damage, or substitution of goods. Andrei Kreer, general director of the insurance service Polis.online, estimates that only 5% to 7% of Wildberries sellers have insurance policies at all, and that only 10% to 20% of those include sabotage coverage — policies that tend to cost significantly more.

Alexei Moskalenko, head of the Association of E-Commerce Representatives, said sellers will begin negotiations with Wildberries once the damaged warehouses have been inventoried, and expressed hope the two sides would find a “compromise solution for covering the losses.” Alexei Fedorov, head of the e-commerce council at Russia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the government could get involved in resolving the question of compensating sellers.