Ukraine’s HUR Claims Wildberries Cyberattack Hit Customer Service and Payments After Warehouse Strikes

Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, known as HUR or DIU, claimed that it and the Cyber Corps hacker group disrupted Wildberries’ digital infrastructure on August 10–11. According to the Ukrainian account, the operation affected the retailer’s main remote customer-service channel, increased pressure on its contact centers and partially destabilized payment systems, prompting complaints from customers who said they could not complete payments.

HUR presented the cyber operation as the digital phase of a broader campaign against Wildberries. Ukraine says the goal was to compound the damage caused by weeks of drone strikes on the company’s warehouses and logistics hubs. The alleged intrusion, its mechanism, duration and operational impact have not been independently verified. Wildberries had not publicly confirmed the cyberattack or commented on the claimed disruption.

What HUR said the cyberattack affected

The Ukrainian intelligence service identified three main areas of disruption:

• Remote customer service: HUR said the company’s primary remote customer-service channel was disrupted.
• Contact centers: The claimed failures placed additional strain on Wildberries’ contact-center operations.
• Payments: HUR said payment infrastructure was partially destabilized, with users reportedly complaining that they could not make financial payments.

Those descriptions indicate an attack aimed at the systems customers and sellers use every day, rather than only at back-office infrastructure. However, there is no public independent assessment establishing which systems were accessed, whether data was stolen or destroyed, how long the problems lasted, or how many users were affected.

How the cyber operation connected to the warehouse campaign

Ukraine’s cyber claim followed a series of reported drone attacks on Wildberries facilities across Russia. Reporting described strikes on multiple warehouses, deaths and injuries among employees, fires and interruptions to operations. HUR and Ukrainian officials said the physical campaign had already affected the retailer’s logistics network before the cyber operation was announced.

Several figures circulated in Ukrainian and international reporting, including claims that 23 Wildberries warehouses had been hit, nine employees had died, and goods worth an estimated $5.9 billion had been destroyed. Ukraine also said that seven of the company’s 10 largest logistics centers had been put out of service. These should be treated as reported totals or estimates—not as independently audited measurements of damage.

A later strike during a major Russian drone assault was reported to have caused a fire at Wildberries’ facility in Koledino near Podolsk. Russian authorities said the wider overnight attack involved hundreds of Ukrainian drones, while available reporting did not establish the precise extent of the warehouse’s inventory loss or structural damage.

Why Ukraine says a consumer marketplace is part of the war effort

Wildberries primarily sells consumer products, but Ukraine argues that its importance extends beyond retail. HUR described the company as a major element of Russian logistics and a source of financing for the Russian war effort. Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have also said that Wildberries logistics facilities help supply Russian forces with drone components, navigation equipment and other military-related goods.

The evidence and characterization remain contested. Reporting has described military-related items—including drone components and body armor—appearing on the marketplace, while other analysis has found no public evidence that Wildberries is systematically embedded in Russia’s Defense Ministry infrastructure. The central dispute is whether the company’s broad commercial logistics network should be treated as a military supply channel because some goods sold or moved through it may support Russia’s war effort.

Why Tatyana Kim and Wildberries became symbols of the campaign

Wildberries’ scale helps explain why it became a prominent target. The company grew from a family business operated from an apartment near Moscow into Russia’s largest online retailer and a significant economic and logistics actor. Its founder and chief executive, Tatyana Kim, is widely described in reporting as Russia’s richest woman.

That profile gives the attacks a wider meaning. For Ukraine, striking Wildberries is a way to target a commercial network it says supports Russia’s wartime economy. For Russian officials and the company, the strikes represent attacks on civilian commerce, workers, sellers and ordinary customers. Kim called the warehouse attacks “acts of terrorism” affecting civilians and millions of users.

Ukrainian and Russian accounts diverge

The two sides describe the facilities in fundamentally different terms:

• Ukraine’s position: Wildberries’ warehouses and logistics hubs are connected to the supply of military-related goods and help finance Russia’s war, making the network a legitimate strategic target in Kyiv’s account.
• Russia’s and Wildberries’ position: The facilities are civilian commercial sites, and attacks on them endanger workers and disrupt services used by millions of people. Kim publicly condemned the strikes as terrorism.

Russian authorities have confirmed deaths, injuries, fires and damage at particular warehouse sites, but they reject Kyiv’s description of Wildberries as a military logistics facility. The available evidence does not resolve every question about how goods moved through the company’s network or whether individual warehouses were directly used to supply Russian forces.

What remains unverified

The strongest version of the story is still based largely on claims by Ukrainian intelligence and officials, alongside reports from Russian authorities and media. Important unanswered questions include:

• whether HUR and Cyber Corps were responsible for the digital disruption;
• which Wildberries systems were actually compromised;
• how long customer-service and payment problems lasted;
• how many users were unable to pay or complete orders;
• whether seven of the company’s 10 largest hubs were fully out of service;
• whether the 23-warehouse total counts direct strikes, secondary damage or temporary interruptions; and
• whether the $5.9 billion goods-loss estimate reflects destroyed inventory, broader business losses or an early wartime assessment.

Until Wildberries or an independent cybersecurity and damage assessment provides more detail, the cyberattack should be described as claimed by HUR, not independently established. The broader significance is clearer: Ukraine is treating a major e-commerce logistics network as part of Russia’s economic and potentially military infrastructure, while Moscow and Wildberries insist that the campaign is harming civilian commerce.