A legitimate target or a war crime? Russian commentators can’t agree on Ukraine’s Wildberries strikes.

1Ukraine’s attack on the Wildberries warehousesOvernight on July 18, Ukrainian drones struck Wildberries warehouse complexes in Elektrostal (outside Moscow) and Kotovsk (Tambov region). Eight people were killed and dozens were injured; preliminary estimates put sellers’ losses at more than 150 billion rubles, according to Meduza.The legality of the strikes is being debated online:Kirill Martynov, editor in chief of Novaya Gazeta Europe, called Wildberries’ logistics centers “legitimate targets” for the Ukrainian military.Conflict Intelligence Team co-founder Ruslan Leviev, speaking on the Zhivoy Gvozd broadcast, said such strikes constitute a war crime — just as similar Russian attacks on Ukrainian logistics centers do.2Which comparable attacks are we talking about?These are primarily Russian strikes on the terminals of the logistics operator Nova Poshta. Financial Times reporter Christopher Miller, citing a senior Ukrainian official, reported that the attacks on Wildberries warehouses were retaliation for the strikes on the Ukrainian company’s facilities.By Nova Poshta’s count, Russian forces had damaged or destroyed more than 400 of its branches and terminals by the start of 2026. On June 15, three ballistic missiles struck Nova Poshta’s largest sorting center in Kyiv. And on July 19 — the day after the attack on Wildberries — a terminal in Kharkiv was destroyed.The Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office called the latest attack a war crime and opened a case under Article 438 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, “Violation of the laws and customs of war.” Ukrainian prosecutors classified previous strikes on Nova Poshta the same way.3Why did Wildberries warehouses become targets for the Ukrainian military in the first place?Immediately after the strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said these facilities were being used “to supply sanctioned components for the production of drones and navigation equipment.”The marketplace does sell both gear for the military and drone parts.4And does that make the warehouses a “legitimate target”?Apparently not. The sale of dual-use goods alone is not enough.The First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions prohibits attacks on civilian objects. It defines military objectives as follows:”[…] military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose, or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture, or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage” (Article 52, paragraph 2)A presumption of civilian status also applies. In cases of doubt, an object cannot be considered military — and therefore cannot be attacked:“In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.” (Article 52, paragraph 3)As a lawyer who spoke with Meduza on condition of anonymity said, pinning down the status of the Wildberries warehouses more precisely would require “a great deal more information, which civilians are unlikely to be able to obtain right now.” Even so, in the expert’s view, these terminals “are unlikely to meet the criteria” for a military objective:In my view, the mere presence [on the marketplace] of dual-use goods, absent knowledge that they will be used specifically for military purposes, fails to satisfy the following condition: an attack on the facility is unlikely to secure a definite military advantage in the specific circumstances ruling at the time, as set out in Article 48 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions.5But what if, for example, Russia’s Defense Ministry were using Wildberries to ship weapons?We haven’t heard of any such practice. But even in that hypothetical case, the military would be bound by another constraint — proportionality in the use of force.Article 51 of the same protocol prohibits indiscriminate attacks. These include:(b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.Put simply: if the Wildberries or Nova Poshta warehouses were packed with weapons and military equipment, they could be attacked. But if weapons make up only a negligible share of the goods stored there, they cannot be.“If there is no evidence that destroying a marketplace warehouse would yield a concrete military advantage, then the destruction itself would violate the principle of proportionality and, consequently, the norms of international humanitarian law,” the lawyer who spoke with Meduza said.6If a civilian object is attacked and the damage is disproportionate, does that amount to war crimes?Yes. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists such acts among war crimes, including “intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects” — objects that are not military targets.It also classifies as a war crime “intentionally launching an attack” in the knowledge that it will cause “incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment.” The attack must also be expected to cause damage that “would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.”7So will the International Criminal Court prosecute military personnel for these strikes?Russian personnel — quite possibly. What’s more, back in 2024 the ICC issued arrest warrants for four members of Russia’s Armed Forces over strikes on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine: long-range aviation commander Sergei Kobylash, Black Sea Fleet commander Viktor Sokolov, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.They were charged with precisely this — “intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects” and inflicting disproportionate damage on civilian infrastructure — following attacks on energy facilities in Ukraine in late 2022 and early 2023.We don’t know whether the strikes on Nova Poshta terminals will likewise be classified as war crimes, but based on the practice described above, that seems entirely plausible.8And the strikes on Wildberries warehouses?The ICC, by contrast, will most likely leave these Ukrainian attacks alone — though not because they have so far been fewer than Russia’s strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. And not even because Ukraine is carrying them out only because it must defend itself against Russia’s armed aggression.From the ICC’s standpoint, the reason is more mundane: Russia never ratified the Rome Statute. The court simply has no jurisdiction to investigate crimes committed on Russia’s “canonical” territory — within its pre-2014 borders.A trickier question is potential Ukrainian strikes on warehouses or other civilian infrastructure — in Crimea, for instance. Ukraine signed the Rome Statute in 2024, but with a caveat: the court’s jurisdiction over Ukrainian military personnel will not take effect for seven years — in 2031.Once that period ends, the ICC will certainly be able to investigate potential war crimes against residents of Ukraine’s “canonical” lands. But we don’t know whether it will have the authority to take up cases from the 2025–2031 period.Oddly enough, Russia’s Investigative Committee does not formally treat the strikes on Wildberries warehouses as war crimes either. It opened a criminal case under Article 205 (“Terrorism”) rather than Article 356 (“Use of prohibited means and methods of warfare”).By Denis Dmitriev, with contributions from Ekaterina Mezentseva