Wildberries founder Tatyana Kim addresses sellers on drone strikes, warehouse damage, and compensation, calls Ukrainian strikes ‘terrorist attacks’

On July 31, after two weeks of Ukrainian strikes on her company’s warehouses, Wildberries founder and CEO Tatyana Kim addressed sellers, customers, and the business community in a video shared on her Telegram channel. Meduza has translated her full remarks into English.

For almost two weeks now, our company’s warehouses have been under terrorist attack. Why our warehouses in particular? Wildberries is the people’s marketplace, used by every resident of our country and of other countries as well. That means strikes against us are strikes against hundreds of millions of people in 10 countries at once. Against our employees, our sellers, manufacturers, logistics operators, pickup point owners, thousands of other entrepreneurs, contractors, and customers, some of whom are socially vulnerable.

Attacks on Wildberries’ infrastructure are attacks on civilians. And, I repeat, not only on Russians. Tens of thousands of people from Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Uzbekistan, and China do business within our ecosystem. Entrepreneurs from those countries have also suffered losses in the billions.

Warehouse defenses and drone attacks

I see “armchair experts” on the internet holding forth about air defense coverage for our facilities and so on. Let me repeat: our warehouses are equipped with every available means of protection. Since the first day of the attacks, we have been strengthening and reinforcing our line of defense daily, including through engineering solutions. For obvious reasons, I will not disclose the details. But rest assured — we are upgrading our protection systems every day. And the fact that we successfully repel the majority of attacks is direct confirmation of that. And this is happening even as the terrorists increase their firepower every day. In the case of the Yekaterinburg warehouse alone, where cars in the parking lot caught fire, there were more than 200 incoming fixed-wing drones.

Now I would like to talk about fire protection at our facilities. Since 2024, when we created the merged company, we have completely overhauled fire safety operations at our warehouses. Over these two years, we have set up our own firefighting brigades, equipped every facility with the most modern fire suppression systems, and begun manufacturing our own components. We also hold regular evacuation drills with staff.

About 2,000 people work on fire safety at all of our warehouses every day. The Fire Safety Service is headed by a colonel of the internal service, a former Emergency Situations Ministry officer with more than 26 years of experience in firefighting. That has allowed us, and continues to allow us, to keep people at the warehouses safe, to contain fires quickly, and, where possible, to keep our sellers’ goods intact.

At the same time, it must be understood that the drones striking industrial sites, oil refineries, and marketplace warehouses carry fragmentation charges intended to injure as many people as possible. The terrorist attacks on our warehouses constitute force majeure. Whether or not that clause appears in the offer agreements is immaterial; under the law, these losses are not subject to compensation.

Unfortunately, the internet has filled with fraudsters and lawyers looking to profit from the misfortune we share. They are exploiting the situation and people’s lack of knowledge, offering their services to solve problems. So I appeal to all of our sellers: dear partners, trust only our company’s official communication channels and the state. In the current situation, only we and the state can help you.

Here are the steps we are taking now:

• Cooperation with the state: We have acted as a conduit for the interests of small and medium-sized businesses, and we have already discussed with the federal government a comprehensive set of support measures for all affected entrepreneurs. A general system under which everyone will receive help is now being developed. This set of measures will be announced in the coming days.
• Financial assistance: While that system is being developed, we have already made two tranches of support payments to sellers whose goods were damaged in the attacks. The second tranche covered nearly 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses, many of which have already received the funds.
• Terms for larger partners: For our larger partners, we have introduced an increased loyalty discount on their goods at our own expense, a repayment holiday at our bank, and a number of other support measures.
• In-person meetings: Starting next week, we plan to hold in-person meetings with entrepreneurs in the hardest-hit regions to address, case by case, the immediate problems that have arisen.

Logistics and plans for the future

I have said before that we are rebuilding our logistics infrastructure as fast as we possibly can, redistributing flows across our various facilities to maintain delivery speed and the turnover of our partners’ goods. For security reasons, I cannot disclose the details, but rest assured — we are doing everything possible.

We have never let you down, and we have always found a solution to any problem. And I see no reason why the current situation should be an exception. We have dozens of offers to lease logistics capacity inside Russia and beyond its borders. Some contracts have already been signed. In addition, we will soon bring online the facilities we have been building in other countries where we operate.

The ‘true motives’ of the ‘enemy’

In striking us, the terrorists are covering up their true motives and accusing us of supposedly selling goods for military use. But you can open any global marketplace — Amazon or Alibaba — and see whether we carry anything they do not. There is no logic, no common sense, and no rationality in the terrorists’ actions, nor can there be.

The enemy itself has publicly stated that the attacks on Wildberries are directed at ordinary citizens. Its sole aim is to apply pressure, to destabilize, and to cause panic and shock among large numbers of people.

The only thing that can be done now is for all of us, Russia’s business community, to keep a cool head, to have a plan for regrouping in the near term, and to adapt and transform. We entrepreneurs know how to do that better than anyone.

We can see that the situation has united everyone: entrepreneurs, customers, the business community, and regional officials are all joining forces to solve the problem. We will do everything we can to help businesses get through this difficult period.

I thank you all for your support! Together we are stronger! Because Wildberries is you.