One bright afternoon last September, a 47-year-old Russian entrepreneur walked down an elegant street near the Kremlin towards the headquarters of the country’s largest e-commerce business. Moments later, passersby heard screams.
Vladislav Bakalchuk helped start Wildberries together with his wife Tatyana in 2004. Over the next two decades it became Russia’s equivalent of Amazon. Customers from Siberia to the Crimean Peninsula (which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014) can order from its vast range of affordable basics – women’s shoes, kitchenware, stationery – and have the goods delivered to a nearby pick-up point within 24 hours. One of the firm’s bestselling items over Christmas was a keratin hair mask, retailing for 399 roubles ($4).
Wildberries’ penetration of Russia’s sprawling territory is so extensive that a stand-up comedian recently joked about his elderly relative using the app to order logs directly to his village. The family-owned company’s extraordinary growth – apparently achieved without any outside help – has been one of the most striking private-sector success stories in Russia in recent years.
Autumn sunlight glinted off the sleek glass façade of Wildberries’ headquarters as Bakalchuk approached. Until recently the building had hosted the Russian offices of Apple and Bloomberg. Vladislav, with his scruffy beard and loose-fitting shirts, looked more like a nerdy American startup founder than a sharp-suited Russian plutocrat. Acquaintances have characterised him as a gentle soul, bookish and fond of chess.
But when he visited the office that day he was flanked by a posse of martial-arts fighters from Chechnya, all dressed in dark clothes. (Chechnya is one of several autonomous republics in south-western Russia that comprise the North Caucasus, a region associated with tough fighters.)
Video later circulated shows a member of the Chechen group hitting the building’s glass façade with a blunt instrument. Policemen dither ineffectually. At some point security guards loyal to Bakalchuk’s wife, Tatyana, surged forward from inside. Some of these men were from Ingushetia, another republic in the North Caucasus, and in the mêlée two of them were killed. Many more people at the scene were injured, including policemen.
“Wars lead to simplifications. The thinking goes, ‘we have no time for complicated solutions. Let’s go for something easy.’”
Businesspeople in Moscow hadn’t witnessed scenes like this since the lawless 1990s, when tycoons regularly ordered hit jobs on their rivals. The descent of the Wildberries brand, from the subject of panegyrics in the Western financial press to a shootout among heavies from the Caucasus, is partly a family saga.
But it’s also a story of how the war in Ukraine has changed Russia. It has emboldened oligarchs and warlords, which helps explain how a suave Moscow company became tangled up in the ethno-political conflicts of the North Caucasus. It has also reduced Vladimir Putin’s bandwidth. With the dispute-arbitrator-in-chief absorbed by developments on the front, some Russian businessmen are embracing old-school tactics to advance their interests. “Wars lead to simplifications,” said Alexander Ivanov, the former head of a prominent Russian e-commerce trade association. “The thinking goes, ‘we have no time for complicated solutions. Let’s go for something easy.’”
Like many startups, Wildberries has a rags-to-riches story behind it. When she was 29, Tatyana, a Russian of Korean descent, was stuck in the couple’s rented home in a working-class neighbourhood of Moscow, looking after her baby. The way she tells it, she was in a funk, grappling with postnatal depression, and struggling to find work as an English teacher. Then she had a brainwave.
“I always felt ill at ease at department stores,” she later explained to an interviewer, “so I started thinking how to bypass the shops.” She decided to open a fashion business, ordering mid-range clothes from German and French catalogues and selling them online to fellow Russians. In the early days she packed the orders herself. Tatyana (who now uses her maiden name of Kim) owned 99% of the firm; Vladislav the remaining 1%.
Even as it expanded across Russia, Wildberries’ corporate identity remained down-to-earth. In 2018, by which point Tatyana was the country’s second-richest woman, she gave an interview to a YouTube influencer in which she said that she wore only clothes from Wildberries. She laughed at the idea of splashing out on designer labels.
(opening image) Ramzan Kadyrov (right) has ruled Chechnya since 2007, when he was appointed by Russian president Vladimir Putin (left) at the tail end of the second Chechen war. (above) Tatyana Bakalchuk (right) and Vladislav (left) started Wildberries in 2004
Former associates say that some aspects of the Wildberries legend ring true, especially the lack of pretension. The couple, who eventually had seven children, never seemed to have a taste for the high life. Unlike other successful business owners in Russia, they weren’t photographed sipping champagne at parties. “Once they invited me to meet them on the second floor of some shopping mall. Something like a food court,” a former executive said.
But one aspect of the official company history has become controversial: Vladislav’s slender role in it. Unlike his wife, he already had some experience as an entrepreneur when Wildberries started up – he had co-founded a moderately successful broadband provider shortly after finishing his physics degree. According to Polina Brovko, a former Wildberries employee, Vladislav was deeply involved in the development of the business, but let his wife take all the credit for PR reasons.
In 2017, when Tatyana started telling its origin story, Wildberries was growing rapidly. Mystified by the company’s ascent, people in the Moscow business world began to speculate it must be getting a helping hand from somewhere. The Bakalchuks needed a narrative, and hired a PR firm. According to an executive who closely worked with the couple, Vladislav, a reclusive man, was “categorically unwilling” to step into the limelight. Tatyana, however, was game. “This is how they came up with this legend of a teacher on maternity leave. In terms of marketing, it was a genius idea,” said Brovko, who is an ally of Vladislav’s.
The story appealed to the main demographic Wildberries were trying to attract – women between the ages of 25 and 35. (When asked about Wildberries’ origins, a spokesperson for Vladislav said Tatyana’s story was “a PR move” and a “fairy tale”, which had “sold very well in the media”, but denied that Vladislav himself had anything to do with it. Tatyana’s representative said the account was “historical fact”, and that Vladislav had simply been employed by Wildberries at certain periods for specific roles.)
When a business in Russia reaches a certain size, its owners often consider it prudent to seek a krysha – a protector
Whatever the truth of its origins, Wildberries insiders say Vladislav’s role in running the company was significant. One senior employee, who has not sided with either spouse in the dispute, described Vladislav as the company’s “God and tsar”. “I don’t think anyone had any doubts that both were the co-founders who ran the business together,” said Ivanov, the former head of the e-commerce trade association. But he admitted one thing puzzled him: “The reason why Tatyana had 99% and Vlad had 1% is not clear at all.”
When Vladislav and Tatyana founded Wildberries in 2004, memories of the chaotic 1990s were fading. As Putin centralised power and brought oligarchs to heel, the business environment stabilised. At the same time, surging oil prices made the elite wealthy. Some of this boon trickled down to the middle class, who were ready to consume.
Without fanfare, businesses in sectors such as IT and retail sprung up to meet this demand. Politicians were too preoccupied by what was happening in oilfields and coal mines to pay them much attention. Ivanov said that Wildberries’ ability to grow relatively unnoticed was due to the fact that its business was “high-tech”. “If you are pumping something out of the ground it has a price, you don’t have to have a degree to know that,” he said. In the early 2000s the average oligarch “would not get his head around” complex things like an e-commerce company, added Ivanov.
Grace periods don’t last forever, however. When a business in Russia reaches a certain size, its owners often consider it prudent to seek a krysha – a protector. The concept of a krysha, which literally means “roof”, became widespread during the 1990s when predatory gangs would demand that nascent capitalist enterprises pay them protection money. As time passed the gangs realised it was in their interests for these businesses to flourish, and they became more like patrons, helping their clients manage state bureaucracy and out-manoeuvre rivals. After Putin took control of the country the idea of a krysha changed slightly, to refer more to someone with close ties to the Kremlin. Nowadays big companies will typically call in a krysha if they’re facing trouble with regulators or looking for help repelling a hostile takeover.
In January 2024 a fire broke out at Wildberries’ biggest warehouse. The disaster left the company vulnerable
For a long time, the Bakalchuks seem to have been uninterested in acquiring a krysha, or even in networking with senior officials. “They never wanted to schmooze with anyone or seek favours,” a former executive said. “They knew that if you ask for something, they will ask you for something in return.”
The Bakalchuks were focused on their business plan. They got Russians hooked on discounts (rivals had introduced them too, but not on the same scale). Wildberries was the first e-commerce company in Russia to offer free returns, and installed changing rooms at pickup locations to encourage customers to buy clothes in multiple sizes and send back rejects. When the country went into lockdown in 2020, the company was perfectly positioned to reap the benefits. During 2021, the second year of the pandemic, Wildberries’ net profit rose from 2bn to 14bn roubles.
The company’s expansion wasn’t frictionless. Its profit margins were thin. In 2023 it started fining its own delivery workers when goods were returned damaged, which caused turmoil and strikes. But the purple Wildberries logo became ubiquitous in Russia. And while most other online retailers were snapped up by larger conglomerates or came under the protection of oligarchs, Wildberries appeared set on remaining family-owned.
One way that a would-be krysha can force a company to accept his patronage is to encourage regulators to harass it, and then offer to make the harassment go away. By 2023 Wildberries may have been drawing this kind of attention. In 2022 government health-and-safety inspectors visited Wildberries facilities 400 times. In 2023 there were more than 1,600 inspections.
A reckoning came in January 2024, when a fire broke out in Wildberries’ biggest warehouse, a 70,000-square-metre space in a town called Shushary just outside St Petersburg. The blaze, which destroyed an estimated 10bn roubles-worth of stock, took more than 24 hours and 400 firefighters to put out. The authorities were quick to blame the company, alleging that the warehouse had yet to be given its fire-safety certificate (Wildberries insists the company was fully up-to-date with its paperwork).
“One thing,” the delivery expert’s boss added. “My wife has kicked me out of the company temporarily and barred me from talking to anyone”
According to Dmitry Nyagu, then a senior employee in Wildberries’ delivery department, both Vladislav and Tatyana realised the gravity of the situation immediately. “It was a heavy blow,” Nyagu said. “I was on a Zoom call that day. Everyone was very upset about it – both Vlad and Tatyana.” (Both parties told 1843 that their primary concern had been the possibility that lives might have been lost, rather than the reaction of the state.)
Authorities pursued charges of negligence. In other countries, this might have been the prelude to a fine. But in Russia, it can be the opening move in a takeover gambit. According to Vladislav’s representative, officials searched the Bakalchuks’ home (the government did not reply to 1843’s request for comment on its response to the fire). As one former employee put it, “you can build your business until someone spots it and wants to get it from you.”
The Bakalchuks were a private couple, and no one will say exactly when their marriage started to unravel. Whatever the state of their relationship at the start of 2024, the fall-out from the fire must have added to the strain. Moreover, they clearly had different views on how to address it.
After the blaze, Tatyana started merger talks with Robert Mirzoyan, the head of a smaller company called Russ Outdoor, which produced billboard ads. Vladislav’s representative told 1843 that Mirzoyan and his brother had approached Tatyana with an offer to help ensure she didn’t face criminal charges. (Tatyana’s representative denied this, and said that she had initiated discussions with Russ Outdoor.)
According to the Bell, an independent Russian media outlet, Mirzoyan went on to arrange a meeting between Tatyana and Suleyman Kerimov, a billionaire oligarch he was friends with. Kerimov, who comes from Dagestan, a republic next to Chechnya in the North Caucasus, is a member of the Russian parliament with a colourful reputation (he once crashed a Ferrari in Nice).
Vladislav has been described as the “God and Tsar” of Wildberries
He is said to have a flair for hostile takeovers. He is also rumoured to be close to Putin, a perceived connection which helped earn him several rounds of Western sanctions. In spring 2024, according to the Russian media, Kerimov took Tatyana first to meet the Kremlin’s chief of staff, and later Putin himself. (Tatyana denies meeting Kerimov, and Mirzoyan denies any business links with him.)
In mid-June, Wildberries put out a terse statement announcing it would be merging with Russ Outdoor. A letter leaked to the Russian media indicated that Putin himself supported the deal. A few weeks later, Wildberries’ assets were transferred to a new company, founded by Tatyana and the Mirzoyan brothers. Wildberries owned 65% of this new company, and Russ Outdoor the remaining 35%.
On paper it made little sense: Russ Outdoor had no digital expertise and a fraction of Wildberries’ revenue. Russ Outdoor’s financial contribution to the joint company’s charter capital was 7m roubles (around $70,000), as well as its advertising assets, while Wildberries was transferring all of its property and lucrative contracts with suppliers to the joint venture.
Tatyana’s spokesperson said that she had decided to merge with the advertising firm “after a balanced discussion with the team and a thorough assessment of all processes, based on her plans for the development of the marketplace.”
Around the time the merger was announced, Nyagu, Wildberries’ delivery expert, got a WhatsApp message from Vladislav. Nyagu had asked his boss for support with a logistics issue, and Vladislav texted back the contact details of someone who could help. “There is also one thing,” his boss added. “My wife has kicked me out of the company temporarily and barred me from talking to anyone. So for the time being, you’re on your own.”
On July 23rd 2024, a few weeks after Wildberries announced its merger with Russ Outdoor, a video was uploaded on Telegram. It showed Vladislav sitting in a tastefully furnished living room, complaining about his family turmoil to a man in a dark hoodie. “Things are not great,” Vladislav said with a shy smile. “My wife left me and got involved with a dodgy crowd who are raiding our business under the guise of a merger and funnelling the assets.”
The Wildberries intervention capped a successful run for the Chechen leader. The previous year his nephew had managed to get appointed to oversee corporate assets seized from Danone
The man listening sympathetically was Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya. Putin appointed Kadyrov to rule Chechnya in 2007 and continue his brutal suppression of separatist insurgents there. The strongman cultivates an image of thuggish swagger that is almost comic in its intensity. Before Instagram shut down his account he used to post images of himself grappling with tigers and pythons.
Since becoming Putin’s satrap he has accrued a private army, the kadyrovtsy, whose members are so brutal the Ukrainians are reported to have a verb for beating named after them. Kadyrov has been linked to multiple assassinations, and his regime in Chechnya became notorious for disappearing dissidents and torturing gay people.
Gravely, the warlord promised Vladislav that he would “bring back home” his wife, and shield Wildberries from the “dodgy crowd” – implicitly, the Mirzoyans and Kerimov.
The entrepreneur’s friends were shocked to see him cosying up to Kadyrov. There had been no hint of such a friendship before; it’s hard to see how their paths would have crossed. It could only mean that Vladislav was determined to hang on to the company, an acquaintance speculated. “When I saw Vladislav with Ramzan, I knew he was going to fight till the bitter end,” he said.
Kadyrov, too, was taking steps into the unknown. The Chechen leader was already reputed to be a rich man when the war in Ukraine started, allegedly thanks to illegal taxes and “tributes” from the Chechen elite (when asked once by a reporter about the source of the money flowing into his republic, Kadyrov replied “Allah gives it.”).
After Vladislav brought a group of Chechens to the company headquarters last September there was a fracas which left two people dead and many more injured
But before the war in Ukraine he didn’t move aggressively in the world of blue-chip Russian businesses. Any attempt at making inroads there would probably have caused Russia’s tycoons to push back, with Putin’s blessing.
Since 2022 however, those who have contributed to the war effort seem to feel emboldened to break the unwritten rules. The invasion has had few more emphatic cheerleaders than Kadyrov, which has enhanced his standing with Putin and made members of the Russian establishment reluctant to challenge him.
The Wildberries intervention capped a successful run for the Chechen leader. The previous year his nephew had managed to get appointed to oversee corporate assets seized from Danone, a French yogurt maker, after the company suspended its operations in Russia. “Kadyrov has grabbed Danone for himself, simply because he can,” said Alexander Kolyandr, a fellow at the Centre for European Policy Analysis. “Was that a reward for military valour or did someone ask for it at the right moment? I don’t know but this is an excellent example of converting political loyalty into a business asset.”
A few hours after the video of her husband and his new friend surfaced, Tatyana put out one of her own. Dressed in a plain grey T-shirt and sitting in her open-plan office, she sighed as she responded to the allegation that she’d fallen under the sway of a “dodgy crowd”.
“As you can see, I’m not anybody’s hostage,” she said. “Recently the team and I made the decision that we needed a transformation to keep up the growth. I’m really sorry that Vladislav decided to publicise our family issue. I would be happy if I could keep the details of my private life to myself. But I can confirm the start of divorce proceedings.”
Tatyana discussed the matter further in a two-hour TV interview with Svetlana Bondarchuk, a socialite. During the decidedly softball interview (the two women drank a glass of champagne together at one point) Tatyana portrayed her marriage as unhappy, bordering on abusive. Vladislav gaslit her, she claimed, and took his frustrations out on her. Sometimes she had to ask guests to leave the house immediately if he was in a bad mood, for fear of what might happen.
The bodies of the slain Wildberries’ guards were flown to their native Ingushetia for burial, and met at the airport by thousands of male mourners chanting “God is the greatest!”
When asked about these claims, Vladislav’s representative said: “Tatyana profitably created such an image of Vladislav as an abuser on the eve of the divorce proceedings. They were an ideal family, and this was noted by all their friends.
”Dozens of supportive comments underneath the video show just how much backing Tatyana has among the company’s customers. Wildberries “was a life saver for me when I was on maternity leave,” wrote one fan. “ONLY a woman could have come up with this idea.”
The Bakalchuks’ dispute was by now drawing in an ever wider range of actors. In September, shortly after the champagne interview, Vladislav and his Chechen thugs (several of whom were subsequently linked to Kadyrov) made their appearance at the Wildberries building.
When asked about the incident, a spokesperson for Vladislav told 1843 that he had come to the building for a meeting with a subsidiary of Wildberries that he owned, and to learn more about the merger. Vladislav had been warned about “possible provocations”, the spokesperson said, which was why he had brought private security with him, and it was not his guards but Wildberries’ who had started the commotion.
The bodies of the slain Wildberries’ guards were flown to their native Ingushetia for burial, and met at the airport by thousands of male mourners chanting “God is the greatest!” It was a worrying development. Annexed by the tsars in the 19th century, the North Caucasus has a culture of its own. Inhabitants of Chechnya and Ingushetia speak similar languages, which are not related to Russian, and when tensions between them flare up they can have the intensity of a family quarrel. Ingushetians had felt bullied by their more powerful neighbours in a recent land dispute, and some saw the killing of the Wildberries guards as part of the same pattern. A few weeks later Kadyrov fanned the flames, appearing on local TV and threatening to declare a blood feud on Kerimov, Tatyana’s alleged patron.
Vladislav’s appearance with Kadyrov (right) came as a shock to his friends. The Chechen leader is notorious for his brutality
According to Caucasus tradition, if a man declares a blood feud on someone his clansmen are obliged to help him kill them. In 2019 an ally of Kadyrov declared a blood feud on a Chechen dissident living in Poland. Two attempts on the dissident’s life followed.
In the local TV video, Kadyrov talked to his security officials in Grozny about Kerimov and his associates, whom he accused – without citing evidence – of trying to murder him. “They’ve ordered a hit on me, to kill me,” said Kadyrov, who was dressed in a tracksuit with prayer beads slung over the top. “I say it officially: I’m officially declaring a blood feud…unless they prove me wrong, because I’m from the Caucasus. I’m Chechen.”
Putin’s taming of the businessmen who had made Russia so violent and unpredictable in the 1990s was achieved with a mixture of force and diplomacy. When two oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska and Vladimir Potanin, were clashing over control of a nickel company in 2010, the president flew to the remote mining town of Norilsk to mediate in person.
In her book “Putin’s People”, Catherine Belton describes the amazement of a Western banker when he realised that the president was willing to intervene not only in huge affairs like the Norilsk dispute but in relatively trifling deals with just $20m at stake. Through such actions, Putin ensured that rival oligarchs were satisfied or scared enough to abide by the rules he laid down: stay out of politics, don’t cause instability, and contribute to important projects, such as the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Kadyrov always seemed to have been given more latitude than most members of the elite, but Putin’s officials have reined him in before. In 2020 the Chechen warlord lashed out at Emmanuel Macron, the French president, for supposedly inciting Islamophobia in France (Chechnya, like the rest of the North Caucasus region, is predominantly Muslim). After a Kremlin spokesman criticised him for overstepping his role, Kadyrov backed down, admitting that it was not his place to meddle in foreign policy.
When asked about the Wildberries affair by reporters, Putin’s press secretary said, “We’re not in a position to meddle in family affairs”
Putin’s influence has been strangely invisible in the Wildberries chaos, however. In the weeks following Kadyrov’s blood-feud statement, no one in the Russian government has made any attempt to dress him down for essentially threatening to order the death of a Russian member of parliament. Nor has the Kremlin taken a public stance on the shootout that occurred just metres away from its walls. (When asked about the Wildberries affair by reporters, Putin’s press secretary said, “We’re not in a position to meddle in family affairs, let alone business relations.”)
Many people were arrested at the Wildberries office and charged with roles in the deadly assault, but dozens of them have petitioned the court to free them so they can join the Russian army and go to Ukraine. This gambit is thought to be highly likely to succeed.
Vladislav himself was initially detained on charges which included murder and attempted murder, but was released two days later. He shared a video from a gaudy interior, very much unlike his marital home, saying he was “at home and all right”. He did not explain how his legal woes went away. His lawyers told reporters that the charges had been “a blatant and unprecedented violation” of their client’s rights.
It’s not clear what will happen to the Wildberries fortune next. Kadyrov’s bet on Vladislav could still pay off: although initial motions filed by the businessman to stop the merger were dismissed by the court, he may win back as much as 50% of the company in the divorce trial due to take place later this year.
Vladislav posts updates about the case on his Telegram channel, and occasionally, shares moments of maudlin nostalgia. One recent post was a video of him and Tatyana in happier times, both dressed in tracksuits and wearing identical pom-pom hats, laughing in a goofy dance in the snow. ■
Nataliya Vasilyeva is a journalist in Istanbul
ILLUSTRATIONS Petra Zehner