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Manveen Rahna
from the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manveen Rahna. It's been a difficult week in Kyiv as night after night the city has come under fierce attack.
Catherine Philp
The haunting sound of the air raid sirens wail across Kyiv. It's soon followed by the sounds of explosions.
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Ukraine's capital is reeling today after being pounded in a Russian missile attack overnight
Catherine Philp
in what's being described as one of the deadliest assaults on Kyiv this year. Ukrainian officials say at least 17 people have been killed.
Manveen Rahna
Residents of the Ukrainian capital are piling into crowded shelters and metro stations every night in an attempt to avoid the bombardment.
Catherine Philp
The air raid sirens sounded, but there wasn't much time for people to take shelter because those ballistic missiles arrive so quickly.
Manveen Rahna
But while Kyiv is being pounded every night, the Ukrainians aren't the only ones feeling the pressure over. In Russia, an unexpected campaign is underway.
Catherine Philp
So there's this video that's been posted online and it shows this enormous low building at the bottom. There's just orange flame and then absolutely vast billows of smoke going up and up into the air and burning for hours.
Manveen Rahna
The building that's on fire is in the Russian city of Samara, and it's been hit by a Ukrainian drone.
Catherine Philp
There's people standing around in horror, just watching as it goes up. These buildings are warehouses, logistical hubs for a company called Wild Berries.
Manveen Rahna
Wild Berries. This attack is not on a military base or munitions factory, but on an online retail business often referred to as the Amazon of Russia. So why is it being targeted by Ukrainian forces? The story today Ukraine's plot to Sink the Russian economy.
Catherine Philp
I'm Katherine Philp. I'm the world affairs editor of the Times, and I'm currently in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
Manveen Rahna
Catherine, thanks for speaking to us, because I know it's been a long night for you. You've actually spent the night in a metro station because of all the bombing in Kyiv. Just describe what it was like.
Catherine Philp
Well, I arrived a few days ago, and actually the day I arrived, we'd had this warning from the Ukrainian Air Force that there was going to be a massive attack. And it sent a lot of people scrambling for shelter that night in a way that we really haven't seen since 2022 and the beginning of the war. The hotel that I'm staying in was entirely booked out, and often by people who live in Kyiv who were just looking for somewhere to stay that had a proper shelter. But a lot of other people who don't have shelters in their buildings have been going down to the Kyiv Metro, as they did in 2022, and spending all night there, just simply because the depth of it gives them some safety. The trains don't stop until 11. You get people who arrive by train, and then they'll set up in their preferred space. There have been on some of the busier nights in a bit of conflict over the fact that some people bring tents, which is quite sensible in a way. It gives you privacy and the chance of actually blocking out the light that would keep you awake. But sometimes tempers flare over someone essentially, you know, taking up more than their due space. There's dogs, there's cats. There was a very neurotic Chihuahua a couple of nights ago who would kick off every time someone walked past it, and its owner would have to kind of cradle it like a baby and calm it down. Oh, yeah. Nerves everywhere.
Manveen Rahna
Afraid. Just give us a sense of what the mood is like in Kyiv at the moment.
Catherine Philp
I think there's a mood almost more exhaustion than anything, because the difference between the strikes that came before and the ones now is that Russia has changed its tactics. So it's really that the Ukrainians have adapted very well to being able to shoot down a lot of the drones that Russia sends. So it's now sending ballistic missiles. Seventeen people have been killed and at least 44 others injured in yet another heavy Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, including one with a cluster warhead. And the reason for this is that ballistic missiles, the only thing that can stop them are the Patriot systems that Ukraine was given by the US and which have to be equipped with interceptor missiles. As of Saturday, after a very difficult night in which nine people were killed, President Zelenskyy announced that the country had simply run out of those interceptor missiles. And that was why, of 27 ballistic missiles that were launched at Ukraine that night, only one could be intercepted.
Manveen Rahna
That's a huge problem going ahead, too, because there's no sign of getting more interceptor missiles from America.
Catherine Philp
The thing about the ballistic missiles as well is they hit very fast. And a lot of the people that we met, they said they couldn't get from their house to the metro in the time it would take a ballistic missile to hit, because it's a matter of minutes. Just the other night, a mother and daughter were killed as they tried to get into the shelter. So they were literally just seconds away from safety. So, yeah, it's not surprising that some people just decide, right, you know, this is going to be where we sleep for now.
Manveen Rahna
So, Catherine, we are four years into the war now. Clearly, Kyiv is feeling the intensity of the war more than it has for a lot of that period. And the fact that they're out of interceptor missiles will have caused a huge amount of anxiety and fear. Can you paint a picture for us of how the war is going elsewhere and then the front line, what does that look like now?
Catherine Philp
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the reasons that this is happening to places like Kyiv is because things are pretty much a bloody stalemate on the front line. What's effectively happened is that both sides now are doing almost all of their fighting with drones. The drones on either side have a range of about 20km. So from 20km either side of that zero line, it's what we call a kill zone, and nothing moves in there. If you're trying to send someone up to the front line, you wouldn't send them in a vehicle because that would be too easily spotted and hit. They would get out and walk those last 20 kilometers, and it might take them several days. They would do it undercover to try and avoid the drones above. This also means that if someone's injured or if someone needs resupply, they'll send in a ground robot, like little unmanned vehicle on the ground that will just bump its way across to the front line. And there, either a wounded man will be put on that vehicle, which is then brought back, or it will bring supplies. It's a pretty bleak place. Soldiers can get stuck there for months because it is so difficult and dangerous just to get in and out in the air wars. Ukraine has been doing well. It's had a lot of successes in for example, hitting Moscow's oil output, which helps fund its war effort. And it's also brought the war home to Russians and this kind of cost of the war home. So it's having a social effect and a psychological effect that people can't necessarily get hold of fuel when they need.
Manveen Rahna
Took a while for Ukraine to be able to strike Russia at home, that really has amplified. Now it's happening so much more often. Just talk us through some of the recent attacks that will have rattled the Russian population.
Catherine Philp
I mean, I think that it has been these vast oil refinery fires that people have seen. Huge fires have erupted at refineries across Russia, causing apocalyptic scenes with thick, toxic black smoke seen billowing across towns. The fact that you've had the skies of Moscow blanketed with black smoke from these attacks, this is the aftermath of
Manveen Rahna
a strike Ukraine says it carried out Tuesday on a Russian oil refinery.
Catherine Philp
There's been attacks on refineries in Rostov, which is on the Sea of Azov, that have literally had kind of black, oily rain falling on the beaches where people were holidaying. Oily black droplets appearing on their clothes and skin alongside strong smells of chemicals and burnt rubber and oil slicks in rivers. But then just in the last two weeks, these rolling attacks on this online retailer, Russia's largest, which is Wild Berries.
Manveen Rahna
Tell me about that, because it seems like a surprising target. Is this a one off attack?
Catherine Philp
Well, it doesn't look like a one off attack. They have launched about two dozen attacks on Wildberry's facilities. I think we're now at 10 or 11 completely destroyed logistics hubs, which is a massive hit on a company that has these vast facilities dotted across the huge country that is Russia in order to facilitate its distribution networks.
Manveen Rahna
Wow. I mean, it does seem to have unleashed a chain of chaos in Russia, and we'll explore that a bit more in a moment. Before we do, though, most people outside of Russia won't have heard of Wildberry. So just tell us a bit about this company, how it's emerged and just give us a sense of its size and scale and its significance. In Russia.
Catherine Philp
It's known as Russia's Amazon. It's actually bigger and more dominant in its market than Amazon is. Even in the US it accounts for no less than 50% of all online sales in all of Russia. By contrast, I think in America, Amazon has about 35% of the market. You've got a country that spread over 11 time zones getting hold of cheap goods and the goods that you need in a short amount of time isn't easy in Russia. And while Berry's changed all that, it's amongst the largest, if not the largest taxpayer in. It contributes more to, wow, Russian coffers than almost any other company. I think it's, it's up there amongst them. Its turnover is something like 6 trillion rubles, which I think is somewhere in the, in the region of about 60 billion pounds a year. It's owned by this woman, Tatiana Kim, who is Russia's richest woman. She was married to another oligarch. So she, I mean, she paints this idea that she's somehow self made, which is, I think a little bit of a stretch. But she is no longer with her oligarch husband as they went through a very acrimonious divorce some years ago. It doesn't seem to have hurt her bottom line though. And she has with Wildberries, you know, really built it into a company that has deepened its links very much with the Kremlin over time. She actually took a plan to Putin about three years ago saying, you know, we can not only be Russia's answer to Amazon, we could also go global. They have their own system of payments which it's outside of the kind of US led international payments and banking systems obviously most Russians are shut out from because it's run by the US and so is sanctioned. And kind of as a result of all of this, the company ended up going into partnership with vtb, which is a state controlled bank in Russia, which bought 5% of the company.
Manveen Rahna
So Catherine, how has this online retailer found itself embroiled in the wall?
Catherine Philp
Well, starting on July 18th with the first hit of a Wildberry's logistics hub, barely two days have gone past without yet another one and these, you know, videos of their warehouses in flames hitting social media. It is an absolutely relentless campaign. Every Wild Berries warehouse and everyone who works in them must be just waiting for who comes next. You know, if you think that the oil industry was a sort of soft underbelly of the war economy and surprisingly easy to hit, Weld Berries is almost easier. I mean, it's just an incredible weak spot. And in a sense it's remarkable that they didn't think beforehand that this could happen to them.
Manveen Rahna
Coming up, why the sustained attacks on wild berries could prove to be such a threat to Russia, that's in just a moment,
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Manveen Rahna
Catherine how do the Ukrainians explain why Wild Berries is suddenly top of the target list? I mean, what, what does President Zelensky said about this?
Catherine Philp
So right after the first strike happened, his initial argument was that it was because of Wildberry's role in supplying the Russian military. So Wildberry's doesn't sell like lethal weaponry or anything like that, but it sells an awful lot of stuff that gets used by Russian soldiers, a lot of it actually bought by Russian nationalist war supporters who want to send stuff to units, and even had on the website it had a sort of special page or portal which said everything for the special military operation, which is the Russian term for the invasion of Ukraine. So that gathered together things like flak jackets with ballistic plates, helmets, but also components for drones. And some of them you'd have to justify quite creatively how that wasn't offensive. So things like a specially designed component for a commercial drone that perfectly holds a standard issue Russian military grenade that would then be used to drop.
Manveen Rahna
So they thought that made it a legitimate military target Effectively they say that, yes.
Catherine Philp
And I mean, you've got to remember these are questions under international law about whether something is a military target. Now Ukraine would argue that that does make it one because it so explicitly was in support of the war as well as selling those items. But Zelenskyy then indicated, said that this was a campaign that was being waged in revenge for similar Russian targeting of Ukraine's civilian infrastructure. And he made reference to something that we believe is that the fact that the Russians have targeted Novoposta, which is, it's like the DHL of Ukraine. I think the Russians maybe use a similar argument, say that the military use the post in Ukraine, everyone else. But there have been quite a few attacks on Nova Pochita and indeed employees of the company killed.
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Manveen Rahna
So this is partly considered a military target by the Ukrainians. Now legally, we don't quite know where that lands, but also a sense of revenge for them hitting their postal service. You also mentioned that Wildberries has somehow, in the course of just a few years, become one of, if not the biggest taxpayer in Russia. Just give us a sense of the kind of impact, impact a prolonged campaign against them could have on the Russian economy.
Catherine Philp
I think a very serious one. And again, there have been people around Zelenskyy who've spoken to this issue. One of his senior advisors explicitly talked about that to bring down Wild Berries would have huge and deleterious effect on the Russian budget and the money it uses to wage the war because it would lose so much revenue from it. And again, it's not clear because, you know, such business recordings are not always transparent in Russia. But it appears that Wildberry's is vastly indebted to that bank, vtb, which is a state controlled bank in Russia. Oleg Deripaska, who's a Kremlin friendly oligarch, has warned that, you know, Wild Berry's is so exposed that were it to go bankrupt, there could be a cascade Collapse of Kremlin LinkedIn Banks in Russia because it has simply been so overexposed in its recent expansion. It's just an incredible weak spot.
Manveen Rahna
And vtb, as you said, is a state bank and you have a banking system there which is cut out of the international banking system. So it's very sort of interrelated. If one of the biggest companies in the country starts to default on its loans, you can see how that might be a 2008 banking crisis situation.
Catherine Philp
Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I think that really is worth mentioning is the sense of public disquiet that it's sending. And the fact, you know, in a country where people haven't necessarily had much exposure to the war or just haven't felt it affects them and are quite complacent about it, to be honest, the sense of shock that you get from people posting on social media about it, they're just sort of horrified that the war has come home to them, as I think the Ukrainians would put it. People are going online, going, where is my parcel? Why have the prices gone up? What's happening? Why is nothing working? You've got retailers who, a lot of the people who sell on wild berries, I mean, it's similar to Amazon. They can be small business owners or medium business owners, but they're using it as a distribution network. And they have sent in stock, which they then sent to a warehouse, and suddenly they're seeing video online of. Of that warehouse going up in smoke. So you've got a lot of very, very angry people. And we're talking millions, both in terms of suppliers and customers. You know, quite a lot of those messages have said things like, oh, you know, enough. This is because of the war. The war needs to stop. And people have even appealed to Tatiana Kim, the wild berries owner, saying, please tell Putin to stop this, because surely you have influence over him.
Manveen Rahna
So it really is hitting Russian morale. It is placing people in a situation where they just want the war to be over, which, you know, we haven't seen for four years. That really is significant.
Catherine Philp
Yeah. And I mean, I think it's having that effect on ordinary people. Because if you think of. I mean, do you know anyone who's never got anything from Amazon? It's kind of like that. It's a company that touches everyone's lives. But you also, and I think that this is quite critical is the fact that the government hasn't said anything about this yet. There's talk that the government is thinking about how it might be able to prop up wild berries if it comes to it, to prevent the kind of cascade collapse we're talking about. But there's no real sense yet that the government is prepared to step in when it comes to harm to private companies, and that you've got to wonder the impact that's going to have on all these business owners and oligarchs who are linked to Putin. If they start to up the pressure on the government, if the elites feel that they're being affected by this and that their way of life and their fortunes are under threat, that really changes the calculus in that circle around Putin.
Manveen Rahna
That's so interesting. So suddenly, there's a lot more pressure on Putin to stop the war from these businesses that are suffering, potentially. We've talked about how the Russian economy, which, you know, needs money to be able to fund a war, could take a hit from tax revenues being cut because of wild berries. But if they're having to plow more money in to prop it up or to pay back, some of these businesses are suffering. That's a double whammy.
Catherine Philp
Well, they're either going to have to pay it back, or they. They watch those businessmen change their calculus about how they feel about the war. How exposed do they want to be? There's a whole web of oligarchs and kleptocrats caught up with the Kremlin who may just think that this has all gone too far if their fortune is at threat.
Manveen Rahna
So, Catherine, is this strategy of taking the war to Russia, is it working?
Catherine Philp
I mean, it's having an impact whether it's working or not. It's probably too early to say, but it does appear to be stoking pressure inside Russia. I mean, Russia's response, the way it's coming back with these ballistic missiles, suggests that, yes, it's feeling it, but it still can fight back. I mean, whether any of this is enough to make Putin change course is so hard to tell, because, of course, we just don't really have those kind of insights into his thinking.
Manveen Rahna
Catherine, a lot of people say, you know, look to Ukraine if you want to understand the modern face of warfare. You've got robots, you've got drones. Does it also show that, you know, when you've got a country with a much smaller population than the one it's fighting, when it's all out of interceptor missiles and it's not getting much help from other quarters, is using financial warfare, is using sort of, you know, fighting the narrative, changing minds in Washington by influencing important voices in America in. Is all of that just as important a component of modern warfare now as the drones and the robots?
Catherine Philp
I mean, I think it has to be of your fighting asymmetrically in the way that Ukraine is. I mean, Ukraine was applauded early on for its incredible sort of innovation in the world of warfare, of taking commercial drones and then developing them into attack drones very cheaply, being able to fight back that way. But what has happened over the course of four years is obviously that Moscow has caught up with those, and essentially, you've got a galloping war of innovation on both sides, because each side's innovation drives a new innovation on the other side. So to just leave that behind for a second and go for an entirely new target, a financial one, is a way to fight the war. Now, Russia had done that from the outset by targeting Ukrainian infrastructure, by trying to make Ukraine an unlivable country, especially in the depths of winter. So I think it's a question of each side looking to where the weak spots are, how you can most easily bring an enemy to their knees, especially if you're the smaller party and you have to find creative ways to do it.
Manveen Rahna
That was Catherine Philp, Times World affairs editor. The producer today was Emily Webb. The executive producer was Edward Drummond. Sound design was by Dave Creasy and theme composition was by Malicetto. If you'd like to get in touch with us about this or any other subject, do drop us a line to the story@thetimes.com and if you can do, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.
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Catherine Philp
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Host: Manveen Rana
Guest: Catherine Philp, World Affairs Editor, The Times
Date: August 7, 2026
This episode delves into Ukraine’s new strategy to undermine Russia by targeting its economy, specifically through a sustained drone campaign against Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer. Against a backdrop of relentless attacks on Kyiv, the podcast explores how Ukraine is fighting back, the impact on Russian society, and what this means for modern warfare and Russia’s prospects.
The conversation is urgent, yet analytical—blending ground-level reporting from Kyiv with acute geopolitical analysis. Catherine Philp balances vivid personal detail with clear-eyed strategic insights, while Manveen keeps the pace brisk and focused on connecting the military, economic, and social dots.
Ukraine is shifting the shape of modern warfare, using economic and psychological levers as much as weaponry. The sustained campaign against Wildberries exposes new vulnerabilities in Russia’s war effort, impacting everything from state finances to public morale to Kremlin politics. As Catherine Philp notes, it's too early to say if this will force change—but it’s clearly beginning to sting.