The strike on Wildberries logistics hubs in the Moscow region and Tambov region, which resulted in warehouses covering 350,000 square meters burning to the ground, could become one of the most “costly” Ukrainian Armed Forces attacks in terms of damage.

In addition to the two centers worth about 30 billion rubles, the fires destroyed goods stored there worth at least 150 billion rubles, estimates Sergey Semko, lead analyst at the Data Insight agency. This is a “conservative estimate,” he emphasizes: the value of the burned inventory could reach 170–230 billion rubles.

As a result, the total damage from the fire, by the lowest estimates, will amount to 180 billion rubles — a sum that exceeds the annual budgets of 53 Russian regions. Among them are Omsk region (178.6 billion rubles), Belgorod region (177.3 billion rubles), Udmurtia (172.6 billion rubles), and Tula region (169.6 billion rubles).

The annual budget of Ivanovo region (88.5 billion rubles) is exceeded twofold by the fire damage; that of Oryol region (61 billion rubles), threefold; and the budgets of the poorest regions — Kalmykia (35.3 billion rubles), Nenets Autonomous Okrug (30.5 billion rubles), and Jewish Autonomous Region (28.1 billion rubles) — by nearly six times.

Although Wildberries founder Tatyana Kim said the company is working on possible compensation for sellers who lost their goods, in theory this would require an amount comparable to Wildberries’ entire annual profit: last year it totaled 175 billion rubles, Forbes reminds. At the same time, two weeks before the attack — on July 7 — an updated Wildberries offer came into force, under which the company removed its liability for the loss of goods resulting from drone attacks, missiles, and other munitions.

The chances in court for sellers who accepted the offer are minimal, says lawyer Konstantin Stepanov: the marketplace included UAV attacks in the list of force majeure circumstances, and it is difficult to refer to a unilateral contract amendment, since the offer is considered accepted by the seller at the moment of acceptance. Despite Kim’s statements, Wildberries is already behaving “strangely,” notes Alexander Tarasenko, managing partner at the law firm Legal Assistance: in sellers’ personal accounts, reports on inventory that had been stored in the burned warehouses have simply disappeared, and it is precisely these data that give sellers hope of receiving compensation.

If the expansion of Ukrainian strikes against Russian logistics centers becomes not a one-off action but a systematic campaign, it threatens “clearly negative” long-term consequences for the economy, warns Ekaterina Vlasova, chief economist for Russia at Bloomberg Economics. Companies will have to spend more on security, inventory distribution, and new warehouse capacity, she explains, and this will ultimately be passed on to consumer prices and, as a result, accelerate inflation.