Starting August 7, Wildberries, Russia's largest online marketplace, added a new risk to its voluntary insurance program for sellers: damage or loss of goods due to terrorist attacks, sabotage, drone strikes, and their aftermath. For example, if a product is damaged by a fire caused by falling drone debris, the updated rules, reviewed by several outlets, state.
The maximum compensation for this risk is up to 50,000 rubles per item in an order and no more than 100,000 rubles per insured event. The insurer will determine the exact amount after receiving a claim and considering the 'specifics' of each case, with up to 14 days for review and payout.
The insurance covers only the periods of delivery, storage at pickup points, and return logistics in case of refusal or non-redemption. Storage at warehouses is not covered—sellers will not receive payouts for unordered goods destroyed in recent strikes on logistics centers.
Due to the expanded coverage, insurance rates rose by 40%: they now range from 1.96% to 5.6% of the product's value, depending on the category. Previously, the rate was 1.4% to 4%. For sellers already using the service, the rate changes automatically, and the fee is deducted after each order, regardless of whether the buyer purchases the item.
Wildberries launched its order insurance service in February 2025. Since mid-July, Ukraine has attacked Wildberries logistics centers in various Russian regions—more than 20 warehouses have been hit, some almost completely burned out. Sellers have reported losses of hundreds of millions of rubles and complained that the company does not compensate for damages.
Wildberries founder Tatyana Kim said the company has already paid two tranches of compensation, with nearly 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses covered in the second wave. According to Denis Vetrennikov, CEO of SellerDen, the number of affected sellers could be in the hundreds of thousands. Leading Data Insight analyst Sergei Semko estimated their potential losses at 215–280 billion rubles, while the marketplace's own direct losses, according to The Bell, could exceed 100 billion rubles. Some entrepreneurs said the first payments were disproportionate to the damage: one seller, who lost goods worth about 5 million rubles, received 1,980 rubles from Wildberries, while another with losses of 738,000 rubles received about 41,000.