A2 · Elementary
8 min
businesswar economye-commercerussia-ukraine conflict
War, with Free Shipping
Guerra con envío incluido
A massive Ukrainian drone strike destroyed a warehouse belonging to Wildberries, Russia's largest e-commerce company. Fletcher and Octavio dig into how a retail giant operates inside a wartime economy, and what it means when the war finally hits the warehouse.
Un ataque masivo de drones ucranianos destruyó un almacén de Wildberries, la mayor empresa de comercio electrónico de Rusia. Fletcher y Octavio exploran cómo funciona un negocio gigante en medio de una guerra, y qué pasa cuando la guerra llega al almacén.
5 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| almacén | warehouse / store | Wildberries tiene muchos almacenes en Rusia. |
| depósito | tank / storage container | El depósito de agua está lleno. |
| entrega | delivery | La entrega llega mañana. |
| conveniente | convenient | Comprar por internet es muy conveniente. |
| productos | products / goods | Venden muchos productos diferentes en esa tienda. |
Here's a detail from yesterday's news that I haven't been able to shake.
Eight hundred and twenty-two drones hit Russia overnight.
The largest Ukrainian strike of the year.
And buried in the coverage, almost as a footnote, was this: a Wildberries warehouse was destroyed.
If you're not Russian, that name might not mean much.
But it should.
Wildberries is basically Amazon, Zara, and your local pharmacy rolled into one, and it's enormous.
Sí.
Yes.
Wildberries es muy grande en Rusia.
Wildberries is very big in Russia.
Millones de personas compran allí cada día.
Millions of people shop there every day.
And the story behind this company is genuinely one of the stranger business stories I've come across.
It starts with a woman selling children's clothes from her apartment in Moscow in 2004.
Tatyana Bakalchuk.
Tatyana Bakalchuk.
Ella es la fundadora.
She is the founder.
Es muy famosa en Rusia.
She is very famous in Russia.
Famous is an understatement.
For a while she was the richest woman in Russia.
Not the richest businesswoman.
The richest woman, full stop.
Ella empieza muy pequeña.
She starts very small.
Solo ropa para niños.
Only children's clothing.
Sin oficina.
No office.
Solo internet.
Just the internet.
This would have been the very early days of e-commerce globally.
Amazon had only gone public in '97.
And here's Tatyana, a stay-at-home mother, building what will eventually become a company worth tens of billions of dollars.
En Rusia, ella es un ejemplo importante.
In Russia, she is an important example.
Una mujer con mucho éxito.
A woman with great success.
Walk me through what the platform actually is.
Because I think a lot of our listeners picture something like eBay, which would be the wrong image entirely.
No, no es eBay.
No, it's not eBay.
Venden ropa, zapatos, comida, libros, medicinas.
They sell clothes, shoes, food, books, medicine.
Todo.
Everything.
Tienen muchos almacenes en Rusia.
They have many warehouses in Russia.
La entrega es rápida.
Delivery is fast.
Es muy conveniente.
It is very convenient.
Convenient.
That word does a lot of work here.
Because in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and Western companies started leaving, Wildberries suddenly had a lot more shelf space to fill, metaphorically speaking.
Sí.
Yes.
IKEA se va.
IKEA leaves.
H&M se va.
H&M leaves.
Muchas marcas se van de Rusia.
Many brands leave Russia.
Fifteen hundred companies, roughly, pulled out of the Russian market after the invasion.
That's not a gap in the economy.
That's a canyon.
Y los rusos necesitan comprar cosas.
And Russians need to buy things.
La vida continúa.
Life goes on.
Los niños necesitan zapatos.
Children need shoes.
Right.
And this is something that gets lost in the geopolitical framing.
Sanctions and corporate exits are meant to pressure governments.
But in the short term, what they create is a massive opportunity for whoever stays.
Wildberries crece mucho en 2022 y 2023.
Wildberries grows a lot in 2022 and 2023.
Más clientes.
More customers.
Más productos.
More products.
Más dinero.
More money.
They also expanded aggressively into former Soviet countries.
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia.
Places that are adjacent to Russia economically but also, frankly, useful for getting around certain trade restrictions.
Es un negocio muy inteligente.
It is a very smart business.
Pero también es complicado.
But it is also complicated.
La política en Rusia es peligrosa.
Politics in Russia is dangerous.
Which brings us to 2024.
Because the Wildberries story takes a turn that is genuinely hard to believe.
Tatyana and her husband Vladislav are going through what we might charitably call a difficult divorce.
Vladislav llega a la oficina con hombres armados.
Vladislav arrives at the office with armed men.
Es una situación muy seria.
It is a very serious situation.
Armed men.
At corporate headquarters.
To settle a business dispute.
I've covered some chaotic places in my career but that image is something else.
Hay disparos.
There are gunshots.
Hay muertos.
There are deaths.
Esto no es normal en los negocios.
This is not normal in business.
Three people died in that standoff.
It reads less like a shareholder dispute and more like something from the nineties oligarch era, which tells you something about the nature of big business in Russia even now.
En Rusia, cuando tu empresa es muy grande, el gobierno quiere controlar.
In Russia, when your company is very big, the government wants control.
Es difícil ser independiente.
It is hard to be independent.
Tatyana eventually merged what remained of Wildberries with a state-linked advertising company called Russ.
Which is not exactly a voluntary partnership, if you read between the lines.
Ahora la compañía se llama Russ Wildberries.
Now the company is called Russ Wildberries.
Es diferente.
It is different.
Hay más control del estado.
There is more state control.
And then last night, a drone takes out a warehouse.
Which raises a question I keep turning over: what does it mean to be a major logistics operation in a country that is at war?
Un almacén es importante.
A warehouse is important.
Sin almacenes, los productos no llegan a las personas.
Without warehouses, products don't reach people.
This is what economists call infrastructure targeting.
It's not new.
The Allies did it to German rail lines in World War Two.
The logic is: break the supply chain and you break the economy and you break the will to continue.
It takes a long time, but it works.
Y Wildberries tiene muchos almacenes.
And Wildberries has many warehouses.
Uno destruido es un problema, pero no el fin.
One destroyed is a problem, but not the end.
Not the end, no.
But there's a psychological dimension here that I think matters as much as the physical one.
When a drone hits a military base, Russians can tell themselves it's distant, it's the front, it doesn't touch their daily lives.
When it hits the place where your shampoo and your daughter's winter coat are stored, that calculation shifts.
Sí.
Yes.
La guerra llega a casa.
The war arrives at home.
No solo al ejército.
Not only to the army.
A las personas normales.
To normal people.
I spent time in Beirut during the civil war.
Businesses would open when they could, close when they couldn't, and people learned to stock up during the calm periods.
That kind of adaptation is grim but real.
I wonder if Russian consumers are starting to think that way.
Es posible.
It is possible.
Cuando la vida es difícil, las personas buscan soluciones.
When life is hard, people look for solutions.
Compran más.
They buy more.
Guardan más.
They store more.
Which is, perversely, good for Wildberries in the short term.
Fear of scarcity drives consumption.
It's the same dynamic you saw in Europe with energy stockpiling in 2022.
Commerce adapts to fear in strange ways.
Bueno, hay una palabra interesante aquí.
Well, there is an interesting word here.
Tú dices 'almacén'.
You say 'almacén'.
En español, también decimos 'depósito'.
In Spanish, we also say 'depósito'.
Las dos palabras son correctas.
Both words are correct.
Wait, 'almacén' is warehouse, and 'depósito' is also warehouse?
Those are two completely different words in English.
How do you know which one to use?
'Almacén' es para productos.
'Almacén' is for products.
Una tienda grande también es un almacén.
A big store is also an almacén.
'Depósito' es para agua, gasolina, cosas así.
'Depósito' is for water, fuel, things like that.
So 'almacén' is closer to a store or a stock room, and 'depósito' is more like a tank or a holding container.
The distinction is what's inside, not the shape of the building.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Un almacén tiene zapatos.
An almacén has shoes.
Un depósito tiene agua.
A depósito has water.
Muy diferente.
Very different.
Good to know, because I have a feeling if I walked into a Spanish hardware store asking for a 'depósito de zapatos' Octavio would never let me live it down.
Almost as bad as the other incident.
No, Fletcher.
No, Fletcher.
Un depósito de zapatos no existe.
A depósito de zapatos doesn't exist.
Pero tú siempre encuentras palabras nuevas para confundirme.
But you always find new words to confuse me.
It's a gift.
Alright.
Wildberries, a warehouse, eight hundred drones, and the strange economics of shopping during a war.
If there's a lesson in all of this, it might be that modern economies are harder to isolate than anyone thinks, and that the distance between geopolitics and someone's delivery order is getting shorter by the week.
Sí.
Yes.
La economía y la guerra no son separadas.
The economy and the war are not separate.
Son la misma historia.
They are the same story.