Over the course of a week, Ukraine's Armed Forces (AFU) used drones to strike approximately 10% of the entire logistics infrastructure of Wildberries, Russia's largest online marketplace, and knocked out 8% of the company's warehouses, according to calculations by Kommersant based on open data. The strikes hit facilities in Elektrostal near Moscow (250,000 sq. m), Kotovsk in Tambov Region (108,000 sq. m), Krasnodar (100,000 sq. m), and Nevinnomyssk in Stavropol Krai (94,000 sq. m).

A Wildberries representative told Kommersant that full restoration may be needed for all four facilities. A real estate market source told the outlet that building the same volume of warehouse space, not including equipment, would cost 35.5 billion rubles. At the same time, the fastest solution might be to restore the damaged centers rather than build similar facilities from scratch, added Alexander Perfilyev, head of the warehouse department at Invest7.

An 8% reduction in logistics capacity is a substantial loss for the business, even if it's a temporary decline in throughput, says Kirill Agapov, managing partner at Umbrella Consulting Group. According to him, this will affect delivery times, the accuracy of inventory distribution, and the resilience of the entire route network.

Alexey Moskalenko, head of the Association of E-Commerce Representatives, noted that facilities important to Wildberries were affected. In particular, the logistics center in Krasnodar was the main hub supplying the south of the country. Its loss, together with Nevinnomyssk, isolates a key macro-region during a period of peak demand, explained Alexey Molodykh, CEO of the International Association for the Development of Marketplaces and Entrepreneurs. According to him, the loss of the center near Moscow is also a problem, since import flows and long-haul freight from across the country pass through it.

In this situation, Wildberries may accelerate the redistribution of flows to remote warehouses in the Volga region, the Urals, and Siberia, Molodykh believes. He also said the company may start bringing in third-party logistics operators and launch order acceptance through a network of partner pickup points.