‘Russia opened Pandora’s box first, and now it’s paying for it’: Are Wildberries warehouses legitimate targets? Meduza readers weigh in on Ukraine’s strikes.

In recent days, the Ukrainian military has begun deliberately and regularly striking warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer. These strikes have directly affected tens of thousands of Russians: both employees of the marketplace itself and small business owners who earn money through the service, along with their employees. A few days ago, we asked our readers what they think about these events. Here are some of the responses.

Vasily

Strikes on military factories, oil refineries, and Wildberries warehouses are all driven by simple economic logic: inflict maximum damage on the enemy at minimal cost. Fortunately, Ukraine has not yet sunk to Russia’s level, and drones are not raining down en masse on apartment buildings, hospitals, and playgrounds. But let’s not kid ourselves: if Ukraine finds these strikes economically effective, they’ll happen.

It’s important to remember that Ukraine faces another energy catastrophe this winter, apparently even worse than before, and people will die of cold in their own homes. Volodymyr Zelensky is doing everything he can to get Putin to agree to an energy ceasefire. But Putin doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about Ukrainians who will freeze in their homes, and he doesn’t care about Russian entrepreneurs who are losing all their savings in Wildberries warehouses.

Zelensky listens to his people and dismisses the commander-in-chief because he’s convinced the war can’t be won without their support. Putin doesn’t care about people, since he’s convinced they’ll support him even from kilometer-long lines at gas stations.

Prove him wrong, or expect strikes on apartment buildings and playgrounds. Putin won’t stop on his own. He has to be stopped.

Timofey

St. Petersburg

“Retribution” cannot be justified: revenge lies beyond moral limits. And beyond legal ones too, for that matter. But strikes can be justified, and the strikes on Wildberries are an example of that. Minimum casualties, maximum damage to the economy. Maximum inconvenience for people ahead of the elections.

Unjustified strikes are ones aimed at the civilian population, leaving people without light and heat in winter. But striking the economy is a just war, especially when it’s the part of the economy tied to the defense industry.

Vladimir

Yekaterinburg

I don’t believe defense-industry goods could have been stored in Wildberries warehouses. Zelensky is lying about this to justify his war crimes. In my view, these criminal, terrorist strikes are aimed at creating tension in society and driving down approval ratings for the authorities. The goals are clear, but the methods used to achieve them are, to put it mildly, fascist.

Leonid

Ukraine

In the fifth year of the war, Ukraine is absolutely right to have started responding to Russia’s brutal strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, which have already gone on for four and a half years. Russians shouldn’t get to live in comfort while their countrymen serving in the Russian army are killing Ukrainians.

Alexander

Serbia

It doesn’t matter whether Wildberries warehouses are legitimate targets, or whether both sides are committing war crimes. Whoever wins the war will be considered right and will be seen as having fought “by the rules,” while the other side will be dehumanized, dragged through the mud, and will certainly be reminded of every “war crime.” That’s how it’s always been throughout history.

Victoria

Rostov

First, warehouses aren’t used [to supply the Russian army] that way. This is literally an attempt to justify their own war crimes with propaganda. Second, as we’ve established, these are civilian facilities that would stop being civilian only if a significant share of the goods passing through them were military. There’s no proof of that, not from the Ukrainian military, not from independent observers. If there had been enough body armor there, then strikes on the Ukrainian postal service would be legitimate too.

No, I don’t consider war crimes to be retribution. I consider this an attempt at self-deception, and yet more proof that this is a war between the big Soviet Union and the small one.

[…] What strikes me about these attacks is how easily propaganda works, how easily people slip into mental gymnastics. How easily the leaders of countries can commit the very same evil while [at the same time] justifying and condemning the very same actions. Please explain to me the difference between the work of Ukraine’s postal service and that of a Russian marketplace. And if there isn’t one, why should I call black white?

Mikhail

Moscow

There’s no need to even discuss what both sides are doing along the LOC and in the near rear: war crimes became the norm there long ago. But the strikes on Wildberries warehouses are Ukraine’s first openly committed war crime deep in the enemy’s rear, one that Ukraine’s president has confirmed officially at the highest level.

If you extrapolate a bit from the justification for these strikes (that dual-use goods are sold there), you could bomb literally anything: a grocery store, because soldiers might buy food there; a passenger train, because soldiers might be riding it; a kindergarten, because future soldiers might grow up there. For me, this war stopped being — though it once was, at the start — a struggle of light against darkness, good against evil, democracy against dictatorship. It’s a war between two neo-fascist, inhuman regimes.

Olga

Because of the strikes on the Wildberries warehouse in Elektrostal, my relatives lost a total of about 650,000 rubles. Not a lot compared to others, but not nothing either, given the country’s financial situation. Back in 2022, my uncle had to abandon his car on the way to Verkhny Lars. He’s still paying off the loan on it, partly with money earned through Wildberries. But that’s not what I want to talk about here.

I’m baffled by attempts to equate Putin and Zelensky — as if Zelensky is so opposed to peace that he’s actually fighting a war (just think about how absurd that sounds in the fifth year of the war). Apparently, this supposedly deranged Zelensky only started fighting now — after some Ukrainian cities had already been reduced to rubble.

Meanwhile, Putin has repeatedly been offered peace on excellent terms, but like a lunatic gambling addict, he kept raising the stakes. He invented impossible conditions that no one would ever accept. He jeered and openly mocked people, throwing our fellow citizens into the kill zone for yet another village not marked on any map. He has lost everything: your future and mine, the economy, open borders, the Bologna education system, Lake Baikal to China, Belgorod to Ukrainians, our safety to some department of Russia’s Federal Security Service. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have to turn my VPN on and off just to write this to “Meduza.” My sister would be vacationing with her husband in Germany right now, like she wanted, and my brother would be starting 10th grade. And your life would be different too, probably freer.

No, I’m not happy about the strikes on Wildberries warehouses, or the strikes on oil refineries, or the strikes on the border regions, or the blockade of Crimea. But I know exactly who doesn’t want peace.

Alex

They could just stop making excuses and admit outright that they’re hitting whatever’s easier to reach and will cause the most damage. Talk of a just war is pretty funny given that Russian tankers are a “legitimate target,” while Ukrainian cargo ships are somehow an attack on a civilian vessel.

Ivan

St. Petersburg

My neighbor sells on Wildberries, but he got lucky: his latest shipment hadn’t made it to Elektrostal yet. I’m not a lawyer. To me, war is just war. Any target, apart from a direct strike on unarmed people, is legal and logical.

Yes, people are dying, and that’s terrible, but this is war, and overall I think Ukraine is acting logically and choosing its targets quite well.

The only thing that surprises me is the absence of news about warehouses belonging to Ozon and Yandex. It immediately brings to mind how much today’s Ozon resembles the former AliExpress, which raises some suspicions… In any case, I’d like to see Ozon in the news too.

Alexey

Moscow region

I don’t consider Wildberries warehouses legitimate targets. Yes, there’s some military junk for sale there, just as there is on Ozon, but it’s a small share of the overall inventory. It would make more sense to strike the manufacturers of all that.

Retribution? No, I don’t think so. Retribution would be strikes on the rulers’ dachas, their yachts, their palaces, the tax service, the pension fund. Right now it’s all like the saying goes, “when the lords fight, it’s the serfs who get hurt”: that someone’s T-shirts, furniture, and power tools burned up in Wildberries warehouses hasn’t cost the people who profit from this war a single kopeck.

A lot of our company’s inventory burned up too, and management is now facing a choice: pay the rent or pay salaries? This month we’ll get half our pay, maybe a third, but at least we might not go under and can keep working. Yes, we’re launching a website, and sales through Instagram are growing, but we can’t quickly move away from shipping through Wildberries. And these strikes also create general uncertainty: what if our parts supplier gets hit tomorrow? They have huge warehouses too.

Ilya

Elektrostal

It might seem monstrous to you, but many local residents are glad the warehouse was destroyed. If you read the local community pages, you’ll see hope that real estate prices will drop, that people will stop getting mugged on the street, and other problems associated with [Wildberries] will stop. Nobody cares about the dead, nobody cares that some Muscovite lost a month’s revenue comparable to several years’ salary for an ordinary local resident. Everyone just thinks about themselves, their own comfort, and money.

On the day of the strike, I personally watched a drone fly just a few meters over my building’s entrance. And you know what? I wouldn’t have cared if it had hit my apartment. Putin already tried to send me off to fertilize the black earth back in the fall of 2022, so why should I be shaking over these strikes now? I will never blame Ukraine for my problems, and no one else should either. In the end, if I died, everyone would be indifferent anyway, since for many people all that matters is money and personal comfort.

Ivan

Noginsk

It feels like Ukraine can now freely pick any target in Russia and destroy it. What bothers me isn’t so much that they’re destroying our infrastructure, but that our vaunted state, which started the “SVO,” can’t protect us from something that shouldn’t be happening in the first place.

I can’t wait for our state to finally surrender. The more such attacks there are, the stronger that wish grows in me personally.

Alexey

Moscow region

A legitimate target is a weapons manufacturer, someone who profits from the war, or an actual military unit. Wildberries is none of those things: its core business is ordinary household goods and clothing. Yes, there’s some military junk on the site, but it’s mostly body armor, helmets, and goggles. These are items ordinary people might also use if things got bad, to resist the authorities. Wildberries doesn’t sell actual military weapons or ammunition. So I don’t think striking them is justified. Yes, they’re huge targets, easy for missile and drone AI to spot and easy to aim at, but that doesn’t make them a military, meaning legitimate, target.

Yes, maybe a few more people who did business in Russia will think about emigrating after losing everything, but even more people will be left without money for anything, not just emigration, but even food and rent. And getting out of Russia isn’t cheap: housing in decent countries is expensive, plus there are costs for flights, paperwork, and simply feeding yourself until you find work.

Alex

Israel

At this stage of the fighting, no one really bothers to give the strikes any legitimacy. Although even before, when it came to strikes on civilian targets, the explanations never went beyond “it wasn’t us” or “it just collapsed on its own.” Now nothing is explained at all. Everything is already clear.

From Ukraine’s side, the attacks on the warehouses look like outright revenge, even if an understandable one. The warring sides are moving on to the systematic destruction of any infrastructure, trying to force each other to the negotiating table.

As for justice: if, by some miracle, it ever comes to war crimes tribunals, they’ll be busy enough sorting out executions of prisoners and other crimes of comparable severity. They simply won’t get around to burned-out warehouses full of merchandise.

Andriy

Kharkiv

When I watch videos of fires on that scale, I feel a sense of satisfaction that there’s some justice, and that the aggressor is getting what it deserves.

Taken individually, some Russians might hate the regime, some might just want to live their lives and stay out of politics, but taken as a whole, this is an aggressor country, and anything bad that happens in it can only make me happy.

Olga

Serbia

I don’t know how justified the strikes on Wildberries warehouses are, or whether the Russian military actually uses them, but overall I still get the impression that Ukraine is far more careful about choosing its targets.

If you read any media outlets — pro-government Russian or Ukrainian ones, or relatively independent ones on either side — the number of civilian casualties in Russia turns out to be significantly lower. Ukraine still doesn’t seem to be striking thermal power plants, while Russia does, during the heating season. So Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure, or even on Wildberries warehouses, at least don’t leave people without heat and light at a critical time for that.

Anonymous reader

Kyiv

I’ve been reading debates about whether there’s any point to the strikes on Wildberries. And that’s exactly the tragedy of it: there’s no point to any of what’s happening. The war is simply continuing, that’s all. Someone has to hit something, so they do. They struck oil refineries, extra drones showed up, now they’re striking warehouses. More will appear, and they’ll strike something else.

I’d prefer that no one strike anyone. But I find it somewhat baffling to hear arguments about the expediency of strikes on this or that target in Russia, as if the comfort and well-being of Russian residents were somehow more important than the comfort and well-being of Ukrainians. No, that’s not it. People live in both places, and pretty much everyone is indifferent to them. The war is simply continuing, that’s all. What kind of war would this be if there was no bombing?

Alexander

St. Petersburg

Imagine that Ukraine was the one that attacked Russia in 2022. And that in 2026 Russia started destroying Nova Poshta warehouses in Ukraine in response to Ukrainian strikes on marketplaces in Russia. I can’t find a single reason why responding to strikes like these should be off-limits. Especially since a mutual halt to strikes deep into each other’s territory had been proposed, and Putin refused. That was his choice.

Georgy

Serbia

Striking civilian infrastructure isn’t the norm, it’s a war crime. Russia opened Pandora’s box first, and now it’s paying for it.

History will judge to what extent the decision by Ukraine’s leadership does not violate the rules of war. From the standpoint of the pain and suffering of the Ukrainian people, it’s understandable. The main thing is not to forget, and not to let this become a new norm.

Valeria

St. Petersburg

I don’t know whether Wildberries really was supplying the Russian military, but I do know that these Ukrainian strikes are drawing the attention of passive Russians to the war. I hear fewer people say “I’m not interested in politics” these days, because that group has started thinking about it and taking an interest. Yes, they started late. Yes, it’s sometimes irritating, but at least they started!

I’m scared that there was a drone attack near my home this morning, but this is finally Ukraine really fighting back against the aggressor country. And it’s slowly bringing us closer to the end of the war, and to the horror that will come after it.

Dmitry

St. Petersburg

I consider Wildberries just as much a “legitimate target” as any other civilian business the military might use. By that logic, you could attack a bottled water plant or some clothing factory, because soldiers drink water and wear socks.

Bringing the war [into ordinary Russians’ lives] this way, at the everyday level, is pointless. It’s already been with us for a long time. It will only turn away some of the people who are sympathetic to Ukraine.