SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
There is a new front in the war between Russia and Ukraine - online retail. Overnight, Ukrainian drones attacked a facility that's tied to Russia's equivalent of Amazon, a company called Wildberries. It was the tenth Ukrainian drone strike against Wildberries warehouses this week. NPR's Charles Maynes joins us now from Moscow. Charles, thanks so much for being with us.
CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: Thanks for having me on the show.
SIMON: Tell us about how these attacks have been going on this week.
MAYNES: Well, starting last Saturday and just about every day since, Ukrainian drones have struck these giant warehouses belonging to Wildberries, causing massive fires to facilities outside of Moscow, outside of St. Petersburg and several cities in the south of Russia. The costs have come in lives. At least nine workers are dead, dozens more injured, several of whom were migrant workers from Central Asia. But of course, there's also material costs. Wildberries is Russia's largest online retailer. And its warehouses are full of goods from small and mid-size Russian businesses, who have taken to social media to say these attacks have caused their financial ruin.
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KIRILL VALOV: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: So this is just one example. Kirill Valov (ph), who runs a small clothing line, sounding rather depressed here as he describes how a third of his product, $150,000 in goods, just went up in smoke in a Wildberries warehouse outside of Moscow.
SIMON: Well, what can you tell us about Wildberries?
MAYNES: Well, you know, you might have this impression of Russian business as run by oligarchs - gray men in gray suits. Wildberries is about as far as that as you can go. It's really kind of a remarkable story. It was founded by a woman named Tatyana Kim in 2004. She was a schoolteacher turned stay-at-home mom who started selling hard-to-find quality clothes out of her family's apartment.
Now, critics'll say there's a bit of public relations myth-making going on here. Kim got a bit of money from her then-husband, who worked in the IT sector that helped launch the business. But fundamentally, Wildberries is a story of a woman who had an idea that caught on. You know, it's not a business empire handed to her from the spoils of Soviet industry or, say, resource extraction.
SIMON: How did it become Russia's biggest online retailer? The (laughter) - Wildberries - it doesn't sound like a Russian name.
MAYNES: It is not a very Russian name, Scott. Yeah. You know, Kim chose Wildberries and the company's neon pink WB logo 'cause she thought it sounded positive, progressive and Western. Kim actually taught English. And in the Russian context, it was an important piece of this brighter, you know, middle-class, consumer-driven future that so many Russians seem to want and that seemed so within reach as the Russian economy grew in the arts and beyond.
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TATYANA KIM: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: As Kim herself says to the camera in this Wildberries commercial from a few years ago, what if everyone could choose what they wanted? And, well, a lot of people chose Wildberries, particularly amid the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions that followed. You know, as key Western brands packed up and left, online retail really took over. Little Wildberries distribution points popped up on seemingly every corner. And it's made ordering online deliveries incredibly convenient and preserved a sense of normalcy, I think, for the Russian consumer. It's also made Tatyana Kim rich. Her net worth is around $8 billion - with a B. That's making this former schoolteacher Russia's wealthiest woman.
SIMON: Why do you think Ukraine is attacking Wildberries?
MAYNES: Well, Ukraine says - yeah - Wildberries sells everything, and that includes military hardware.
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PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: (Speaking Ukrainian).
MAYNES: Here's Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announcing the first attack on Wildberries last Saturday and saying the warehouses were used to distribute navigation systems and components for drone production, as well as other supplies for the Russian army.
SIMON: And is that true?
MAYNES: Well, Tatyana Kim denies it. And so does the Kremlin, which calls the targeting of Wildberry an act of terrorism. What I'll say is this. Wildberries doesn't sell weapons. But it does carry items which might fall into the category of dual-use technology, whether that's civilian toy drones or camouflage hunting gear or electronics whose computer chips could be of some use on the battlefield.
And whether that justifies these attacks or not, Kyiv seems to have decided that hitting commercial logistics hubs is yet another way to bring the war home to Russians, along with, say, strikes on energy infrastructure. And I think Russians are learning what Ukrainians have known for several years now - that these soft targets are really, really difficult to defend.
SIMON: NPR's Charles Maynes in Moscow. Thanks so much.
MAYNES: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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