Russia’s largest online marketplace, Wildberries, starts compensating sellers for goods destroyed in Ukrainian drone attacks. Sellers say it’s not enough.

Wildberries, Russia’s largest online marketplace, has announced it will compensate sellers for goods lost in Ukrainian drone attacks. On Wednesday evening, July 22, marketplace owner Tatyana Kim said that sellers whose goods were damaged in Elektrostal, in the Moscow region, would receive payments “within 24 hours.” She said the company would prioritize “supporting the smallest and least protected entrepreneurs,” adding that more than 88,000 sellers fall into that category.

Kim said the company is developing a “sales simulator” that would pay sellers gradually, as if their lost goods had sold from the warehouse at their normal rate. For larger sellers, she said, Wildberries plans to offer credit on special terms.

Within hours, sellers were complaining that the compensation was insufficient. Agentstvo, an independent Russian investigative outlet, and Novaya Gazeta Europe, an independent Russian news outlet, reviewed messages in relevant Telegram chats on the evening of July 22 and the morning of July 23 and found many entrepreneurs saying Wildberries had paid them far less than they had lost. Among the examples: a payment of 2,600 rubles for goods worth a total of 40,000; a payment of 2,900 rubles for goods worth 130,000; a payment of 13,000 for goods worth 140,000 rubles. Most participants in the chats said they had received no payment at all.

Wildberries assured sellers that “payments would go out in several installments.” “Even sellers with the smallest quantities of leftover goods received the first payments. This way, the company supported the widest possible range of affected entrepreneurs already at the first stage,” the company’s press service told BBC Russia. A Wildberries source told the outlet the first installments “amount to 10-15% of what sellers would have earned by selling all their goods,” adding that the payments are voluntary.

Wildberries bears no formal responsibility for the aftermath of the drone attacks. On July 7 — 11 days before the first strike — the company changed its terms of service to classify drone raids as “force majeure,” a change that freed Wildberries from any formal obligation to compensate sellers for the value of their goods.

It remains unclear whether the state will offer any assistance. Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov called the loss situation “difficult” on July 21, saying the government “is working on this issue” and is “in contact” with Wildberries. He did not specify how, or whether, authorities plan to compensate the marketplace for the damage from the attacks. Industry publication estimates put the value of goods held in warehouses in the Moscow region and Tambov region alone at 150-235 billion rubles, comparable to Wildberries’ annual net profit.

Ukraine has struck at least four Wildberries warehouses so far. Logistics centers in the Moscow region and Tambov region came under attack on Sunday, July 19, and centers in Krasnodar and Stavropol Krai were hit on Tuesday, July 22. Reports of an attack on a Wildberries warehouse in Voronezh region on the morning of July 23 were later not confirmed. Nine people have died in the attacks in total, and several dozen were injured. Ukrainian authorities maintain the warehouses, among other things, store goods for the Russian military, making them a “legitimate military target.”