1/ Ukraine's increasingly devastating attacks on Wildberries warehouses in Russia are intended to dismantle Russia's e-commerce economy, disrupt logistics, and drive up prices even further, say Russian bloggers. They are calling for urgent action. ⬇️
2/ Roman Alekhin sees the writing on the wall for Wildberries:
"1. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have already inflicted extreme damage and will most likely continue to do so.
3/ "2. The platform economy will not perish with the collapse of Wildberries. The platform economy is not about mega-warehouses, but about mega-management.
4/ "The fact that Wildberries has, in essence, been destroyed is down to management errors and indicates that it was not quite a platform economy, but something else entirely.
5/ "3. Ozon can take over the market. And not just for a week, until the Ukrainian Armed Forces get to them, but if they're already buying up small and large warehouses in the regions and restructuring management and logistics to decentralise.
6/ "4. It's not critical for people—there are still [physical] stores. I'm sure there will be savings in the family budget, although that's not a given, since stores will be slightly more expensive. We'll see.
7/ "5. Risks from fuel and lubricants. Changing consumer behavior will increase fuel consumption. Public transport could become overloaded. This means that officials should develop cities more evenly, and not just the city centres.
8/ "I've spoken about this many times before—no one listened. Maybe they'll listen now.
9/ "6. Shopping malls will come to life again. People will start seeing people. In other words, the platform economy, as a social technology for isolating people and locking them in apartments and neighborhoods, will collapse.
10/ "7. Managers may realize that they shouldn't put all their eggs in one basket. These are financial and political risks.
11/ "8. Entrepreneurs will lose everything in their warehouses, even if the courts rule in their favoUr. I don't recommend wasting money on lawyers and time on court – the loans will be collected first, and you'll hardly have any money left.
12/ "The smart ones with the ability to forecast have already removed goods from warehouses, the greedy and cunning, looking to cash in on compensation, will lose everything, and those who lack management and forecasting skills will go bankrupt sooner or later."
13/ 'Chronicles of the SVO communications' observes that:
"The enemy is targeting marketplace logistics not because they hate Wildberries. They're targeting them because it's cheap, it's painful, and it affects what's called "the population's baseline sentiment."
14/ "Our colleagues at ZaTelekom calculated that to disable half of the entire warehouse infrastructure of Russian marketplaces, approximately 180 precise strikes would be required. At a rate of three targets per week, that's roughly a year. Not ten years, not forever.
15/ "A year of systematic heavy drone strikes against civilian warehouses. And this calculation, frankly, is more frightening than any single strike.
16/ "Because the logic here is ironclad and cynical. A strike on an oil refinery is costly for the enemy, it requires reconnaissance, and it provokes a retaliatory strike on the energy sector.
17/ "And the warehouse in Elektrostal requires open-source coordinates, it's a civilian facility without air defence, and it requires a night shift of packers who have no connection to the air defence system. The cost-benefit ratio is devastating."
18/ 'The Ghost of Novorossiya' suggests that Ukraine is seeking to destabilise the Russian economy:
"Ukraine's attacks on marketplace warehouses are a prelude to creating another underlying factor of tension, on par with the fuel crisis."
19/ "The destruction of online retail infrastructure will lead to a natural price hike due to unforeseen expenses, disruption of routine logistics, and other problems.
20/ "The underlying goal is to ensure that the war negatively impacts the lives of the majority of the Russian population, who rely heavily on [online] marketplaces as an alternative to traditional, more expensive retail.
21/ "In essence, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are deliberately concentrating pressure from one economic sector to another, building up a critical mass of damage and public backlash.
22/ "This is intended to destabilise and prepare for a pre-revolutionary situation. This could either serve as a factor in forcing Moscow to make negotiating concessions, or as a factor in triggering regime change altogether.
23/ "In any case, continuing to accept the enemy's slaps is tantamount to accepting one of these two scenarios."
Warbloggers are divided about how to respond to the attacks.
24/ Rybar proposes "systematic destruction of the enemy's infrastructure across all fronts—from gas stations to energy facilities. And the recent attacks on Kyiv, for example, have demonstrated that the Russian Armed Forces have the capability to find and destroy key targets."
25/ 'Ghost of Novorossiya' is sceptical about the value of counter-attacks, but also advocates a more systematic approach:
"Under these circumstances, counterattacks will have little effect beyond providing short-term encouragement to a limited domestic audience."
26/ "A systematic approach is needed—a systematic approach that primarily addresses the targets on which the adversary's ability to launch long-range strikes against Russia's critical infrastructure depends.
27/ "Responding to this challenge solely through defence is costly and futile. The time has come to take the initiative."
'Chronicles' asks "why we still haven't protected these facilities."
28/ "The warehouse in Elektrostal is two hundred thousand square metres. It's not a military base where you can deploy a Pantsir system. But it's a facility around which a perimeter can and should be built: detectors, electronic warfare, mobile fire teams,…
29/ …and low-altitude zonal air defence.
All of this exists, all of it is being produced, and all of it costs a fraction of the thirty-five billion it costs to restore it.
30/ "I wrote [earlier] that pure facility protection is a dead end, and that we need a zonal-facility system with echelons. The marketplace warehouse is precisely the kind of facility where zonal protection works perfectly: the far echelon shoots down incoming missiles,…
31/ …the near echelon finishes off any that have penetrated, and the mobile task forces on the ground drive them back and provide cover. But instead, we're deploying air defences around oil refineries and military facilities, while the warehouses sit undefended."
32/ He warns that action needs to be taken immediately to prevent a hindrance becoming a crisis:
"So the question isn't whether they'll hit the next warehouse. They will. The question is whether we'll be prepared.
33/ "Will we disperse our supplies, build perimeters, train personnel in evacuation procedures, and create an early warning system for civilian facilities. Or will we write in the channels every time,…
34/ …"they hit the warehouse, there are casualties," and discuss what scoundrels they are. Scoundrels, yes. But they won't stop. And we can stop being a convenient target.
35/ "If so, a year of their work will turn into a series of annoying but survivable incidents. If not, in a year we will be discussing not seven percent of the capacity taken offline, but fifty. And then the background tension will cease to be background." /end
Sources:
🔹 t.me/Alekhin_Telega…
🔹 t.me/zas_svo/1091
🔹 t.me/ghost_of_novor…
🔹 t.me/rybar/81873
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