Wildberries openly sells FPV drones and other military-grade products
Over the past few days, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces have attacked four major logistics centres belonging to the Russian marketplace Wildberries. In Russia, these facilities are described as civilian, but the range of goods available on the platform itself has attracted attention.
According to Defense Express, FPV drones, hexacopters, fibre-optic reels for strike drones, as well as components for assembling them, are available for open sale on Wildberries. These include flight controllers, motors, ground units for fibre-optic systems, release mechanisms and initiation boards.
In addition, the marketplace features sights for small arms, armour plates, military equipment and other military and dual-use goods.
The authors of the report note that, due to the transport and storage of such products, Wildberries’ logistics infrastructure may be involved in supplying the Russian army. However, the sources cited do not confirm that these specific products were present in the warehouses that were struck.
Strikes on large logistics centres also cause economic losses to the company and to sellers who stored their goods there. Wildberries is the largest marketplace in the Russian Federation, with an annual turnover of over 6.1 trillion roubles.
On the night of 23 July, drones attacked a number of regions in Russia. Explosions were heard in Voronezh, and Russian monitoring channels suggested that one of the possible targets could have been a Wildberries logistics centre. Following previous attacks, the company changed the operating schedule at one of its warehouses, suspending night-time operations between 00:00 and 06:00.
A fire was also reported in the Ulyanovsk region, where an oil refining facility in the village of Novospasskoye may have been hit, whilst a Transneft-Ural facility in the city of Tuimazy in Bashkortostan was attacked. In addition, Wildberries facilities in Nevinnomyssk in the Stavropol Krai and in Krasnodar continued to burn.
As reported by ThePublic, on 24 July, drones attacked Wildberries’ logistics facilities in St Petersburg, the Leningrad Region, Tver and the temporarily occupied city of Simferopol.
