Major Russian online retailers disclaim responsibility for goods lost in drone attacks
Russian e-commerce giants Megamarket, Wildberries, and Ozon have updated their seller terms to avoid compensating for goods damaged or lost due to drone strikes and military actions.
Russian online marketplace Megamarket, owned by Sberbank, has followed its competitors Wildberries and Ozon in changing its terms for sellers. The new rules significantly expand the list of force majeure circumstances, including the use of weapons, military equipment, drones, and munitions, as well as bombardments and explosions. Previously, force majeure only covered general categories such as acts of God, military action, and decisions by state authorities.
The new terms take effect on August 8. Following a series of Ukrainian drone attacks on Wildberries warehouses, Russia’s largest marketplaces have begun rewriting their service terms. Wildberries, Ozon, and Yandex Market have updated their rules, abandoning the obligation to compensate sellers for lost or damaged goods if the cause was military action, including drone strikes.
Many sellers report receiving compensation dozens or even hundreds of times lower than the value of their lost goods. Sellers have posted evidence of payouts ranging from 2,000 to 15,000 rubles ($26–$192) for losses worth hundreds of thousands of rubles. They also complained about being unable to retrieve intact goods from other warehouses and criticized an offer from the marketplace to help rebuild their businesses through preferential loans instead of guaranteed compensation.
On July 18, drones attacked the town of Kotovsk in Russia’s Tambov Oblast, causing a fire at a Wildberries logistics center. On the night of July 21–22, major Wildberries logistics centers in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk caught fire after drone strikes. On July 24, explosions were reported in occupied Crimea for the third consecutive night, with social media users reporting drone strikes in several cities, including on a Wildberries warehouse in Simferopol.
Following the Ukrainian drone attacks on its warehouses, Wildberries removed the product tag “Everything for the SMO,” which had been attached to over 200,000 products. The Russians refer to their unprovoked war against Ukraine as the “special military operation” (SMO).
