Russian authorities have tightened their grip on public information after a wave of attacks on the country’s equivalent of Amazon.
Around 20 Wildberries warehouses have been struck by Ukrainian drones in less than three weeks, killing at least 13 people. Now, authorities have announced a new crackdown: a ban on employees bringing smartphones into Wildberries warehouses.
The move points to growing concerns from Vladimir Putin and his inner circle, who have tried to keep the war away from the daily lives of most Russians.
In recent weeks, videos have circulated online showing distraught business owners who have lost millions in stock, as well as images of plumes of black smoke rising over warehouses across Russia.
It also comes as attacks on Russian energy infrastructure cause fuel shortages and blackouts in the country, as well as in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Wildberries is one of Russia’s largest companies, and a review of satellite imagery from Reuters showed more than a fifth of the company’s capacity has now been damaged or destroyed.
Marina Miron, a researcher in war studies at King’s College London, said the ban on phones will, in part, be designed to avoid helping Ukrainian intelligence when it comes to future strikes.
“Wildberries are treating their facilities as if it was a military facility,” Miron told The i Paper. “Try going to any military base in Europe; they won’t allow smartphones for security reasons. Devices can be compromised and … drones can hone in on electromagnetic emissions.”
Miron also said that smartphones can be used to capture footage, which would help to give Ukraine an accurate damage assessment. “Knowing that Wildberries are targeted it’s fully logical to me that smart devices would be restricted.”
But the ban also has another use: to stop Russians seeing the reality of the war.
Natalya Kovaleva, an academy fellow on Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia programme, said the ban sits “within a much broader pattern of efforts to restrict the circulation of images and videos of Ukrainian strikes inside Russia”.
“In the past week, authorities have detained several people across the country for posting videos of burning warehouses, with some receiving administrative fines” she said. “The objective is not only to ensure operational security but also to manage public perceptions of the war.”
Polls cited by Oxford Economics show an increasing number of Russians describing themselves as “worried”, with the number exceeding those saying “calm” for the first time since 2022.
According to Kovaleva, images of smoke plumes, damaged facilities and successful Ukrainian strikes “undermine” the Kremlin’s long-standing effort to maintain the view that life inside Russia remains largely unaffected by the conflict.
A Wildberries warehouse in Volgograd after Ukrainian strikes. There have been more than a dozen such attacks on the online retailer’s buildings since mid-July (Photo: Vantor/AFP)Now, as the war reaches deeper into Russian territory, “authorities remain determined to control what the public sees and to limit the spread of content that challenges the official narrative,” Kovaleva added.
Natia Seskuria, Senior Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Security at defence thinktank RUSI, said that the decision to ban Wildberries employees from using smartphones “suggests that the Kremlin is concerned not only about operational security but also about maintaining tighter control over information.”
“The latest attacks have been damaging to the Kremlin’s image, undermining the perception that the Russian state is fully in control of the situation and capable of protecting its citizens. By restricting employees to basic phones, Moscow is seeking to reduce the amount of footage circulating on social media, limiting public awareness of the scale and effectiveness of these strikes and helping to shape domestic opinion,” she said.
“Attacks on Wildberries are already influencing public opinion inside Russia, as more Russians develop a growing sense of insecurity.”
However, some analysts have raised concerns that the Wildberries strikes could be used by Putin to strengthen flagging support for his invasion.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey, a former British diplomat, said that “as we know from history – not least the London blitz – the bombing of civilians tends to antagonise people and reinforce, rather than weaken, morale”.
But for Ukraine, its campaign of strikes is something to celebrate, with the increased restrictions on phone use around Wildberries facilities showing the strategy of bringing the war home to Russia is paying off.
“They’re banning filming of the aftermath and Wildberries just banned phones in the warehouses,” a senior Ukrainian diplomatic source told The i Paper. “You don’t hide the destruction if it’s rallying people behind you.”
They added: “These strikes don’t work by making Russians anti-war, they work by breaking the Kremlin’s promise to keep the war away from them.”
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