Russia's e-commerce market may be short by around 400 million orders and 400 billion rubles in revenue by the end of 2026. The cause is the aftermath of Ukrainian drone attacks on the warehouse infrastructure of the country's largest marketplaces. This is reported by RBC-Ukraine, citing data from The Moscow Times and analyst estimates that, for the first time, openly linked the downward revision of the macro forecast to the physical destruction of logistics facilities.

Forecast revised: the market “contracts” by 20%

Fyodor Virin, founder of the analytics firm Data Insight, said that specialists have revised their forecast for the growth of Russia's online retail market by 20%. Now, by the end of 2026, the market volume is estimated at roughly 9.6 billion orders, down from the previously expected 10 billion, while sales volume is put at 15 trillion rubles instead of 15.4 trillion. The gap between the old and new forecasts is precisely around 400 million orders and 400 billion rubles, which, according to Virin, is directly tied to the consequences of the strikes on marketplace warehouses. Most of the losses, he estimates, fall on Wildberries.

Timeline of strikes and the shift in demand to offline

According to available data, strikes on Wildberries warehouses began on July 18, and on Ozon facilities on August 25. Due to damage to the warehouse infrastructure, some products became unavailable to buyers in certain cities, and delivery times increased noticeably. According to Virin's estimate, about 30% of “stuck” orders or items that disappeared from sale were simply cancelled by buyers. The remaining demand mostly flowed to other online platforms, and partly to regular stores: first and foremost, people turned offline for clothing, footwear and books, then for household goods. Against this backdrop, Russian shopping malls recorded a rise in foot traffic during the summer.

Delays in payments to sellers

An additional problem for Wildberries sellers has been payment delays. At the end of August and into early September, some sellers did not receive funds they had requested to withdraw as early as August 17. Wildberries attributed the delay to a DDoS attack. After the issue surfaced in the media, the marketplace made the payments, but reports of new delays continued to come in.

Loss estimates: from 100 to 500 billion rubles

Sergey Semko, a leading analyst at Data Insight, had earlier estimated the potential losses of Wildberries' management company Wildberries RWB from the loss of warehouses and infrastructure at 147–280 billion rubles, and the losses of Wildberries sellers at 445–507 billion rubles. Data Insight analysts put the losses of Ozon and its sellers at roughly 100 billion rubles. According to Alfa-Bank's assessment, the difference in losses between the two platforms is partly due to the specifics of their warehouse infrastructure: Ozon's is more decentralized, and the company rents most of its large logistics complexes. It is also noted that Wildberries does not hide the scale of its losses: as of early August, the Ukrainian Armed Forces had destroyed at least 17% of the company's warehouse space.

Contradictory data

In open sources, the loss figures vary significantly depending on the methodology and the object being assessed. Thus, in the “lead” estimate by The Moscow Times and Virin, the 400 billion rubles figure refers to the market's lost revenue, whereas Semko gives a range of losses for Wildberries RWB itself of 147–280 billion rubles and separately puts seller losses at 445–507 billion rubles, with Ozon accounting for about 100 billion. These figures are not identical: some measure the market's lost revenue, others the management company's direct losses, and still others the sellers' losses. Moreover, Wildberries' official explanation for the payment delays (a DDoS attack) does not fully match practice: after the first round of payments, sellers' complaints did not stop, leaving the question of the real cause of the disruptions open. Therefore, the figures cited should be regarded as expert estimates of varying accuracy, rather than as finalized financial results.