Arabic version: ضربات المسيّرات الأوكرانية تستهدف شبكة لوجستيات وايلدبيريز
According to Cnbc, Ukraine’s drone attacks on Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, have increased pressure on Moscow’s wartime economy. Kyiv has targeted major logistics centers in an effort to disrupt supply chains and add to the financial burden on Russian banks and businesses.
Wildberries said it evacuated a warehouse in Ryazan on Wednesday morning after Ukrainian drones struck several industrial facilities. The company, founded in 2004 and employing about 48,000 people, is widely regarded as Russia’s domestic equivalent to Amazon. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said warehouses hit by Ukrainian drones were involved in supplying Russian forces with drone components, navigation equipment and other military items.
Reuters reported, citing two unnamed sources, that the Russian government may need to support Wildberries, with state-controlled bank VTB expected to play a key role. Sberbank has reportedly developed a loan restructuring program for Wildberries vendors because of concerns that the attacks could lead to bankruptcies among small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Natalya Kovaleva, a researcher in Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia program, said Russian businesses have already faced disrupted supply chains, tax increases, internet blackouts and fuel shortages since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. She said strikes on Wildberries represent a significant new development in Kyiv’s effort to increase economic pressure on businesses and ordinary Russians. Kovaleva said Ukraine hopes a higher cost of war will foster internal opposition and force President Vladimir Putin to negotiate, or at least stop bombardments of Ukrainian cities, though she said it remains uncertain whether the approach will succeed.
Elina Ribakova, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said Russia’s economy had stalled and could record zero growth this year at best. She said first-quarter contraction and a decline in industrial output indicated that the defense sector had also slowed, leaving Russia vulnerable. Ribakova added that energy sanctions legislation could be extremely impactful for Putin’s wartime economy.
