From the founder of Wildberries …
“There are no words to describe all the feelings and emotions caused by the attacks on ordinary people, on our employees, on us, who are simply doing our jobs,” she wrote on Telegram. “But these situations demonstrate the most important thing: we must continue to do what we do for the benefit of people.”
My take:
yes, Wildberries did sell and store drone components, single mode bare fiber and such stuff, but not on a world-changing scale, they most likely supplied smallish drone makers, not big ones
legally, this makes them a target, but actual damage from a burning Wildberries warehouse to Russian warfighting capability is small
meanwhile the presence of civilian employees and a great amount of totally unrelated goods discourages attacking them, and strongly advises to plan any attacks in a way to minimize loss of life
anyway, Ukraine has finally decided to attack them, property damage is likely quite big, not sure about loss of life
this will cause Russian air defense a great deal of trouble, since they have to reshuffle their defenses (they are already over-extended)
but, this does not remove Russia’s sources of income, just genrally f**ks with their economy and causes dissatisfafaction and uncertainty
So overall, I’m not cheering, but I’m not condemning it either.
It’s roughly equivalent to Russia bombing UkrPochta (they’ve done it) with the justification that its warehouses contain Chinese drone parts arriving into Ukraine. Reading directly, not a super bright move - militarily, a target of very low relevance. It could give an advantage through secondary effects.
Ending the war is eventually going to come down to dissatisfaction from the people in Russia, and them eventually doing something to stop their leadership from forcing them to suffer. I think this is likely a smart move, even if it doesn’t affect the frontlines much.
Eventually the cost and lack of fuel, along with the general lack of goods, will lead to the Russian people taking a stand. They should live up to their history and overthrow their modern emperor, who’s living a life of luxury while they suffer an endless war.