What Happens to Wildberries Orders and Sellers After the Drone Strike?

Second-largest warehouse in the country by orders — 7% of the network

On the night of July 18, drones set fire to two Wildberries warehouses — in Elektrostal in the Moscow region and in Kotovsk in Tambov region. In Kotovsk, the target was a 108,000 sq. m complex, while in Elektrostal it was a 250,000 sq. m facility — the company's second-largest warehouse by order processing volume. According to estimates, approximately 5–10% of all Wildberries shipments passed through the Moscow region facility, and the two sites together employed around 11,000 people. 

Real estate consultants surveyed by Vedomosti estimated the lost capacity at approximately 350,000 sq. m — about 7% of the company's total warehouse space. In total, the group has more than 200 logistics facilities covering 5.2 million sq. m. 

There's no single loss figure yet, and the range of estimates itself is telling. Kommersant experts quoted the cost of restoring just the infrastructure itself: from 21.5 to 35.8 billion rubles, depending on whether you calculate at 60 or 100 thousand rubles per square meter. That's just the warehouse itself: walls, engineering systems, and equipment.

Then there's the merchandise. According to Vedomosti's estimate, together with the burned inventory, total damage reaches 50 billion rubles. And if you count aggregate losses including lost revenue and logistics downtime, estimates reach 100 billion rubles. The fivefold range stems from different layers of losses: the company's square meters burn separately, sellers' merchandise on those meters burns separately, and lost sales while the hub is down are counted separately.

Pay up or abandon sellers

There's a legal twist here that's easy to miss. On July 7, 11 days before the attack, Wildberries' terms of service added a clause classifying "military, combat, and defensive actions" and "any consequences of the use of... aircraft (including UAVs)" as force majeure circumstances.

But Wildberries decided to help its partners despite the changes to the terms. Tatyana Kim announced that sellers would receive payments regardless: "Despite the emergency situation and the absence of any obligation to compensate for lost goods, we are already working out the amounts to be paid to sellers." The sum hasn't been disclosed yet, since damage assessment needs to be conducted first.

Sellers will also get support from WB Bank—a fintech unit within the same group. Small and medium-sized businesses will receive deferrals on loans for up to six months, factoring and preferential loans to purchase new goods to replace those destroyed in the fire, waived fees on domestic payments, and higher interest rates on balances. To ensure sellers don't run out of working capital, they're being offered expedited revenue withdrawals and overdraft limits, with some benefits activated automatically, without applications or paperwork.

Outside the group itself, Sber has also publicly stepped in. The bank opened applications for loan restructuring for entrepreneurs who lost goods in Kotovsk and Elektrostal. The bank also offered free insurance consultations. VTB has responded to the situation as well. The bank announced a package of measures for small and medium-sized business clients whose goods were affected at the warehouses in Kotovsk and Elektrostal. Those affected will be able to obtain deferrals on principal and interest payments on existing loans, while the bank promises to consider other relief measures on a case-by-case basis.

Customers lose the least of all

For the average shopper, things are calmer than the news makes it seem. Most orders on Wildberries are paid for upon receipt, so money for an unfulfilled order doesn't go anywhere—the person simply won't receive that particular item. If the item was prepaid and an identical one is sitting in another warehouse, they'll bring it from there. If there's no equivalent, the money should be refunded.

Fulfillment volume has taken a hit. Part of Wildberries' assortment is currently unavailable: goods from the burned warehouses have been pulled from sale, and the storefront has "slimmed down" because specific inventory has been taken out of circulation while logistics are being reorganized. This is most noticeable in delivery times: Elektrostal served the Moscow region and the European part of the country, and its shutdown adds an estimated 3 to 7 days to delivery for affected orders while flows are redirected to neighboring Moscow-area warehouses and regional hubs.

Recovery experience has been developed

The industry has been through similar situations before: in August 2022 a fire broke out at an Ozon warehouse in Istra outside Moscow, with losses totaling about 10.8 billion rubles, of which 6.4 billion was covered by Ingosstrakh insurance—this allowed the company to minimize losses and also underscored the importance of working with insurance products. But Wildberries' most telling case is its own, from a year and a half ago.

On the morning of January 13, 2024, a fire started at the company's warehouse in Shushary outside St. Petersburg—the largest fire in the history of Russian marketplaces. The blaze across 70,000 square meters was assigned the highest complexity rating, level five, and took more than a day to extinguish. Goods worth an estimated 10–12 billion rubles burned, and crucially for understanding what followed, the warehouse itself was not insured: the company would have to pay out of its own pocket.

Then the recovery mechanism kicked in. Wildberries began payouts to sellers on January 15, two days after the fire, without waiting for disputes over liability to settle. Compensation was calculated according to a published methodology: damages were assessed as if the goods had been sold on the day of the fire, January 13, adjusted for each item's turnover rate, the platform's commission, and logistics costs. Money was transferred in installments as assessments were completed, and buyers received refunds for burned orders. The process was neither instant nor smooth—by March 2024, some sellers were still complaining about delays, and the Federal Antimonopoly Service got involved in sorting things out—but by August of that year, the total compensation amount reached nearly 35 billion rubles, about 95% of claimed losses.

At the same time, they closed the capacity gap. While the burned complex was being rebuilt, flows were redirected to other warehouses, and the missing square footage was made up through leasing—in particular, they subleased space in a St. Petersburg logistics park from third-party retailers. Full restoration, including design, assessments, and construction, took a year and a half: the renovated Shushary warehouse was commissioned in July 2025. This exact scenario—quick payouts according to a clear formula, temporary capacity replacement, and rebuilding from scratch—is likely the playbook the company will follow now as well.

How long will recovery take?

Wildberries knows how to rebuild after fires and has the resources to do it. In 2025, the group invested over 310 billion rubles in logistics and IT and doubled its warehouse network. Last year alone, the company opened logistics centers one after another: a robotic complex in Saratov for 12.5 billion rubles, centers in Voronezh Oblast and Yekaterinburg at 11–12 billion rubles each. Building a major warehouse from scratch takes a year to a year and a half, and the group keeps this conveyor belt running constantly.

Financially, a hit of this magnitude poses no threat to the group's stability: Wildberries & Russ's turnover in 2025 exceeded 6.1 trillion rubles with 49% growth, and net profit reached 175 billion rubles. Even the high-end loss estimate of 100 billion represents less than 2% of annual turnover. The consequences of the warehouse destruction should therefore be resolved fairly quickly, and the financial damage will be absorbed without difficulty.