Ukraine is targeting Wildberries. Russia's biggest online retailer. The one that sells yoga mats and phone cases to people in Novosibirsk.
This is what passes for strategic warfare now. Forget the power grid. Forget the railways. Blow up the distribution center where someone's ordering a knockoff Instant Pot.
Wildberries processes millions of packages a day. It's Russia's Amazon, except the delivery driver is named Dmitri and he's driving a Lada with no shocks. The company moves everything from diapers to desk lamps across eleven time zones. Ukraine looked at this logistical operation and said, "That's a military target."
They're not wrong. Turns out when you're running a country that sanctions turned into a economic island, the company delivering tampons and replacement vacuum bags becomes critical infrastructure. Wildberries isn't just selling crap people don't need. It's selling crap people do need because nothing else works anymore.
So now we've entered the phase of the conflict where one country tries to deny another country access to scented candles and bluetooth speakers. This is progress. This is evolution. Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War so that 2,500 years later a drone could take out a fulfillment center in Bryansk.
The founder of Wildberries is worth billions. She built an empire on free shipping and easy returns. Now her warehouses are getting turned into craters because geopolitics decided that disrupting someone's order of kitchen towels is a legitimate military objective.
Retail traders read this headline and think it means something about supply chains or economic warfare or some Ted Talk bullshit about asymmetric conflict. It means a building full of cheap electronics got hit with a missile because that's where we are now.
Next week Ukraine will target Russia's version of Etsy and we'll all pretend handmade soap was the linchpin holding Moscow together.
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