Smoke, Cameras and Panic: How Strikes on Russian Marketplace Fit Kyiv’s Information Strategy

Ukrainian forces are hitting warehouses of Russia’s largest marketplace. At first glance it is a strange target. Why spend limited resources on “wild berries” when there are no tangible successes on the front?

The answer lies in the realm of psychology, media and political expediency. This is not pure economic terror, but a carefully staged show calculated for a Western audience and internal panic, believe television presenter and media expert Alexander Khorovets, political analyst Solomon Bernstein and international observer of the First Information Channel Yana Mendeleva, who broke the entire story down to the atoms.

An Emotional Blow Is Stronger Than an Economic One

First of all the emotional aspect works. It is one thing to hear news about bombings somewhere far away. It is quite another when a person does not receive an ordered T-shirt or a phone case. Videos of affected sellers appear on the internet instantly. On this it is easy to spin a wave of hype. Ukraine traditionally uses precisely this tactic: create noise and maintain the favorite position of “we are striking and winning.”

At the same time there is almost no real macroeconomic effect. Strikes on oil refineries would have inflicted far greater damage. But refineries are strategic facilities covered by air defense. Wildberries warehouses are more vulnerable. Ukrainian resources, however, are also finite: there are not enough munitions and capabilities to constantly “shoot” at the marketplace’s logistics. Therefore every hit is first and foremost an information bomb.

Who Really Suffered and Who Benefited

Wildberries last year showed around 104 billion Russian rubles in revenue and remains a significant taxpayer (including one-off levies such as the excess-profit tax of 770 million Russian rubles). The company will not close from these strikes, as it has warehouses outside Russia as well.

According to various estimates, only 10–12% of warehouse space was damaged; everything will be restored, and the money for this exists. Those who suffer most are Chinese producers whose goods are stored in these warehouses.

Under this scenario the main beneficiaries are direct competitors — AliExpress, Ozon — as well as structures linked to Sber. The latter has already conducted a risk assessment and is effectively “exiting”: it is ready to sell goods through its channels but not to store them in its own warehouses. While others hastily rewrite contracts, turning the “hit” into a force-majeure circumstance, Sber simply leaves the scheme.

Yana Mendeleva: And here it is also interesting that against the background of all these stories the European Union introduced sanctions against WB Bank and Ozon Bank. That is, these platforms are being strangled as much as possible because even in the CIS countries very many people use precisely these marketplaces.

The owner of Wildberries will probably not feel the losses in full. There is enough money to survive restructuring, rebranding and continue operations. The warehouses are insured, albeit with a reservation regarding UAV strikes. And the compensation of around 40 million Russian rubles that will be paid to those affected and the families of those killed after the drone attacks on the warehouses is an insignificant sum for the company as a whole.

Solomon Bernstein: When you have so much money, it is obvious that you can hire good analysts, as well as spies and intelligence officers. You can even pay for a leak of information to some character from the administration of the one who calls himself the president of Ukraine.

“The Show Must Go On”

It must be remembered that at the head of Ukraine stands a showman. And he is putting on a show — a bloody, inhuman one, but precisely a show. They strike where there will guaranteed be columns of smoke and footage for television cameras. Cardboard boxes and fabrics flare up instantly — ideal scenery. Against the background of these pictures Ukrainian media easily write about “hits on Moscow,” even if the fire was quickly localized.

For whom is this show? First of all for Western partners. For the Russian viewer there remains only the task of asking himself questions. The country is waging an existential war for the right to exist. And at this moment a person who weeps over an undelivered item and posts in open access a video of a blazing marketplace warehouse (thereby helping enemy missiles to aim) looks, to put it mildly, strange.

Solomon Bernstein: I have many questions for Russian users. The one who is now crying that he did not receive some T-shirt or a mobile-phone case — are you serious? You really have a problem; your hive is burning. And you are thinking about how to arrange your cell in this burning hive and bring a new television. Well, who are you after that?

In Ukraine such publications have long been harshly suppressed. In Russia they are only now beginning to deal with this.

Mobilization Fear as a Continuation of the Show

In parallel Zelensky’s team is actively promoting a second scare story — the allegedly inevitable new wave of mobilization in Russia. Sources “through closed channels” report that it will begin immediately after the elections.

What is the logic? It is simple: it is necessary to explain to one’s own audience why in Ukraine they are already catching the lame, the cross-eyed and people with mental disabilities, while in Russia people go on contract voluntarily (in the first half of 2026 alone around 200,000 people concluded contracts with the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation).

This propaganda also works on Belarusians: if things are bad for the strategic partner, then they will also be bad in Belarus.

Solomon Bernstein: I suspect that into this media department they recruited those who wrote scripts for “Kvartal 95.” And if earlier they wrote jokes for the stage, now they write them for big politics.

But facts are stubborn: the special military operation has already lasted almost 4.5 years, and if Russia needed mass mobilization, it would already have happened.

A War That No One Declares

The situation around Wildberries is only one episode of a larger picture. Almost no one calls modern conflicts a war. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey’s actions against the Kurds, Israeli operations, the Russian SMO — all of these are “special operations.” The reason is simple: a declaration of war imposes legal obligations — admission of observers, compliance with the Geneva Conventions, the prospect of reparations.

Zelensky shouts about a “full-scale invasion,” but he himself does not declare war. Because if he acknowledges it, then he will be the first to be held accountable for strikes on civilian infrastructure, for drone attacks on residential buildings, for shelling of peaceful citizens.

And also, if one declares war, afterwards one will have to pay reparations. Here Ukraine has every chance of repeating the fate of Germany after the First World War, when it was easier to heat a stove with Weimar money than to take it somewhere — in the end one would spend more effort than the piece of bread bought with it would give.

Fact

Weimar money refers to the paper marks, Notgeld and Rentenmarks that were issued in Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic from 1919 to 1933. This period entered history because of the terrible hyperinflation of 1923, when the old money completely depreciated and people carted it around in wheelbarrows.

A Redivision of the World or an Attempt to Regain Global Dominance?

For a long time the so-called myth of infinity existed in the West. They believed that the infusion of money from the United States would never end, that cheap energy from the Russian Federation and cheap resources from Africa would never end.

Solomon Bernstein: The USA and the West as a whole is a consumer society built on three pillars: the “squeezing” of resources, cheap credit and cheap labor.

But the myth of infinity has ended. By transferring their factories and production to Southeast Asia, in the end they raised an industrial monster in the form of China, Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia. Look at the label of any original brand — Adidas, Nike, Puma, Reebok and other well-known marks. What country of manufacture is indicated there? Germany, the USA, Italy, France? No. The Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are indicated there.

Now the West is trying to regain control by force. The American doctrine envisages one full-scale war plus one proxy conflict. But in practice the United States cannot even sustain two local conflicts.

Things are also not working out for Ukraine with the “Patriots.” The license for the production of Patriot air-defense systems, which Zelensky went to obtain, will in no way help to deploy full-scale production of these systems. Because news has already appeared that Boeing refuses to transfer to third countries the license for the production of self-homing seekers. There are also other bottlenecks — optics and ultra-precise stepper motors, which are produced by only two companies in the world. Therefore even if some production appears in Ukraine, they will not be making simple “blanks” there.

The real scheme looks like this: the USA sells the license to Europe, Europe produces Patriots with its own money, pays royalties, and then on American credits sends the finished weapons to Ukraine. In the end Europe has debts, the USA has control, and Ukraine has an illusion.

The main beneficiary in this construction is not so much Washington as London and transnational corporations. Trump, for his part, is always on the side of the strong. After the NATO summit and Zelensky’s visit (whom no one met at Washington airport, and attention had to be shared with Netanyahu) it became clear: endless financing of the weak side no longer interests him.

The situation increasingly resembles the First World War — a protracted conflict in which the sides are looking for where exactly it is “tearing.” For now it is “tearing” along high-tech weapons and Eastern Europe, where the billions allocated for infrastructure are successfully being stolen.

In Kyiv, the Baltics and a number of other capitals it is not patriots who are in power, but temporary figures who perceive the state as a successful business project: come, bring in one’s own people, carve up the budget and disappear.

Strikes on Wildberries warehouses in this logic are merely an effective decoration. Not a strategic strike, but a media product. And the brighter the smoke, the louder the show.