Perhaps July 2026 will go down in the history of the Russian-Ukrainian war as the moment when Ukraine managed to find yet another way to weaken the Russian economy – despite the brutal ballistic attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.
On the night of July 18, Ukraine struck Wildberries marketplaces in Elektrostal and Kotovsk. At first glance, these are trading warehouses – so why is this important against the backdrop of strikes on Russian oil refining, which have already reduced not only the production of petroleum products, but also Russian oil extraction itself?
But under the conditions of a sanctioned economy, these marketplaces have become Russia’s main trade and distribution centers. If oil and petroleum products are the blood of the Russian economy,
Wildberries marketplaces are its lungs. It is no coincidence that real wars took place between Russian officials and oligarchs over control of Wildberries. The company’s former owner, Vladislav Bakalchuk, stressed two years ago that his ex-wife had seized it and appealed for help to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. The wife of the company’s founder merged it with Russ, whose owners were linked to billionaire Suleiman Kerimov. But most importantly, according to media reports, this merger was personally supported by Putin after Tatyana Bakalchuk, now Kim, wrote him a letter explaining
that the deal between the companies would create “a competitor to Amazon and Alibaba” and ensure ruble settlements bypassing SWIFT. These words illustrate what a serious anti-sanctions tool this is in the hands of the Kremlin.
That is why these strikes offer a real chance to end the war. I constantly repeat that Russia can end the war only if it lacks resources and money. And people, of course. But the model of a mercenary army that Putin chose for this war for good reason also requires money.
Ukraine has recently been constantly searching for the vulnerable points of the Russian economy. The attempt to reduce oil extraction and the production of petroleum products was already a step in the right direction. Not to mention the problems of the Russian army, this created the preconditions for a large-scale fuel crisis and the actual isolation of occupied Crimea. Strikes on military-industrial complex enterprises slowed the production of drones and missiles. And now comes a new phase of strikes – against Wildberries warehouses. Yes, products needed for the production of those same drones may be stored in these warehouses. But these are also strikes against the economy as such.
Of course, such strikes will not force Putin to stop the war immediately. I do not even think the Russian president thinks about ending the war at all when he is briefed on economic problems. But the issue is not Putin’s economic competence, but the real capabilities of the state he leads.
Ukrainians understand this as well. They also understand the path our country has traveled in this war: from the first still timid strikes deep into the occupied territories, for which no one even wanted to take responsibility, to strikes on the enemy’s critical infrastructure that are meant to push its economy to the brink of survival. Yes, it turned out that two can play a war of survival. And perhaps this is precisely the tango for two that Donald Trump spoke about to Volodymyr Zelensky – only not the tango of peace negotiations, which the Kremlin needs solely in order to continue the war “safely,” without new sanctions from the United States, but a tango of strikes against Russia.
Author: Vitaly Portnikov
