Ukraine Targets Wildberries Warehouses Owned by Russia's Richest Woman

Ukrainian drone strikes have targeted the warehouses of Wildberries, the Russian e-commerce equivalent of Amazon. Tatyana Kim, the founder and richest woman in Russia, has seen her business empire hit by 23 night raids since mid July. These attacks have destroyed goods and structures across eleven time zones, resulting in the deaths of nine employees. Data Insight reports that the company has lost one third of its storage capacity and assets valued at 480 billion rubles, which is nearly 6 billion dollars. Tatyana Kim has condemned the raids as terrorist attacks intended to cause panic among the population. In response, Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the warehouses are legitimate military targets because the company sells and distributes military goods, including drones and navigation systems. Kim founded the company in 2004 with her then husband, Vladislav Bakaltsjuk, starting the business from her Moscow apartment while on maternity leave. While the official company history claims it started without capital, reports indicate Bakaltsjuk provided the initial funding from the sale of an internet provider. The business grew to serve more than half of the Russian population, benefiting further from the exit of Western companies following the invasion of Ukraine. In 2021, Kim entered politics by joining the Pan-Russian Popular Front, a coalition supporting Vladimir Putin. In 2024, she completed a merger with the advertising firm Russ Outdoor to create the Rwb group, a project intended as an alternative to the Swift payment network and formally approved by Vladimir Putin.