Russian sellers plead for tax relief after Ukrainian drone strikes hit Wildberries warehouses

Marina Gorshkova, a cosmetics entrepreneur and founder of a namesake beauty brand, whose social‑media following on Instagram exceeds 1.3 million, has issued a public appeal to the Russian authorities in the wake of Ukrainian strikes that have set ablaze several logistics centres operated by the e‑commerce giant Wildberries. Her video address, posted online and which had garnered some 10,000 likes within its first 24 hours, laid bare the mounting anxieties of the platform’s vendors, a substantial proportion of whom, she claimed, had suffered directly as a result of the fires that have engulfed a number of the retailer’s storage depots. With the attacks having begun on 18 July and since extended to facilities in the Moscow suburbs, the Tambov region, Krasnodar, the Stavropol territory, the Leningrad region, St Petersburg and Voronezh, as well as in the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula, the damage has been widespread and, according to Ms Gorshkova, potentially catastrophic for the small and medium‑sized businesses that form the backbone of the marketplace’s supply chain.

Speaking in a tone of evident urgency, the entrepreneur made the case that the destruction visited upon Wildberries’ storage infrastructure now represents a threat not merely to individual commercial entities but to the broader fiscal health of the Russian state itself. Citing her own enterprise as an illustration of the contribution made by such traders, she disclosed that her company had remitted some 45 million roubles in taxes over the preceding eighteen months. Should her business, or others like it, be forced to close, she argued, those revenue streams would simply dry up. “And tomorrow,” she said, paraphrasing her own words, “if we shut down, those taxes will cease to flow into the treasury. The same will happen to all the other sellers who are now in exactly the same predicament.” She further observed that new entrepreneurs, contrary to any sanguine expectations, could not be expected to sprout overnight like mushrooms, and implored the government to direct its attention to their plight with some urgency.

Rather than seek direct compensation for their losses, Ms Gorshkova advanced a proposal that she evidently hopes will find favour in official circles: a temporary suspension of tax obligations for Wildberries vendors for a period of at least one year. Alongside this fiscal holiday, she urged the authorities to prevail upon the banking sector to extend credit‑repayment holidays, thereby affording affected traders the breathing space necessary to rebuild their operations and gradually resume servicing their loans. “The situation is global,” she contended. “People have families, people have employees. And all of this, like a snowball, will turn into a huge number of affected individuals. If you do not intervene now, it will become simply a dead end. Taxes will stop flowing into the treasury, a large number of people will be left without homes or something else.” Her rhetoric, while measured, left little doubt as to the scale of the disaster she envisages, with the destruction at the warehouses posing a cascade of secondary consequences that could, she warned, spiral well beyond the commercial realm.

Beyond her plea for financial forbearance, the cosmetics founder also called for closer scrutiny of Wildberries’ own conduct towards its sellers during this period of crisis. She stated that she had found herself unable to retrieve her own merchandise from the marketplace’s storage facilities, a predicament that, she suggested, called for official oversight to ensure that the platform was adhering to its contractual obligations towards its vendors. The message was framed as a direct entreaty to the Russian leadership: an intervention, she insisted, was now imperative to avert what she characterised as a patently unsustainable situation in which the tax base would dwindle, workers would be displaced, and families would face a precarious future.

The timing of her appeal is significant. Ukrainian forces, beginning on 18 July, have launched a sustained campaign of strikes against Russian logistics hubs and storage depots used by Wildberries, targeting sites in multiple regions across the country. The attacks have reportedly hit facilities near Moscow, in the Tambov region, Krasnodar, the Stavropol region, the Leningrad area, St Petersburg and Voronezh, in addition to the occupied Crimean peninsula. These operations, which have intensified in recent weeks, represent a marked escalation of Ukraine’s campaign to disrupt Russia’s domestic infrastructure and economic supply lines, and have placed a considerable strain on the e‑commerce sector and its myriad suppliers. Whether the Kremlin will respond to Ms Gorshkova’s plea remains to be seen, but her intervention has undeniably shone a spotlight on the collateral damage inflicted upon a community of traders already contending with the broader uncertainties of a wartime economy.