During World War II, Soviet authorities moved industry and people – often forcibly – away from the frontier in Europe into the heartland of Eurasia. The strategic relocation of factories and critical production to the Urals, Siberia, and Central Asia fundamentally changed economies across the union. 

Now, amid a different war on the European front, Russian industry is looking again to Central Asia for relative safety to continue conducting business. 

Wildberries & Russ, the parent company of Russia’s largest e-commerce retailer, Wildberries, reportedly signed an investment agreement this week with the Uzbek Ministry of Investment, Industry, and Trade to expand its logistics capacity in Uzbekistan. The deal comes in the wake of an early August announcement from Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Trade and Integration that Wildberries would expand its warehouse capacity in that country.

Starting in July 2026, Ukraine began targeting major Wildberries warehousing facilities in Russia. Through mid-August, Ukrainian drones had struck at least 20 Wildberries hubs, many of them near Moscow. According to the Moscow-based e-commerce consultancy Data Insight, as reported by DW in mid-August, Wildberries had lost 480 billion rubles worth of goods ($5.7 billion) and a third of its warehouse space. 

As The Diplomat’s Albert Otkjær pointed out in August, WIldberries’ effort to build out its warehousing capacity in Kazakhstan predates the current crisis – though not the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Wildberries’ expansion into Kazakhstan began in 2023, when the company opened its first logistics center in Astana, followed by a warehouse complex in Almaty. In September 2023, Wildberries opened a sorting center in Uralsk, the company’s fifth logistics center in the country. 

Similarly, in May 2023 Wildberries opened its first logistics center in Uzbekistan, in the Tashkent region, followed by plans for a second in Fergana. In October 2023 Wildeberries announced that it would build another logistics center in the Tashkent region.

The recently announced deal pertains to a planned logistics hub in the Zangiata district of the Tashkent region, to be built on a a 67.3-hectare site. According to the company, the facility will generate at least 7,500 jobs. 

As such, the wave of attacks this summer targeting Wildberries is not the sole motivation for its efforts to expand capacity in Central Asia. Those efforts began earlier. The region is, even absent the ongoing conflict, a large market for Russian companies and a bridge deeper into Asia. Factoring in the war in Ukraine only deepens the commercial logic for expansion into Central Asia.

It also deepens the risks. Ukrainian authorities have justified the strikes on an ostensibly civilian enterprise by arguing that Wildberries warehouse are “involved in supplying the Russian military with drone components, navigation equipment, and other gear,” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in late July. 

Similarly, Ukraine justified attacks on Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) infrastructure near Novorossiysk – in November 2025 and July 2026 – given the critical importance of oil revenues to the Russian war machine. But collateral damage to Kazakhstan’s export of oil through the CPC led to pushback from both Astana and Washington. In February 2026, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States said that Kyiv had received a formal demarche from Washington. The complaint, Ambassador Olga Stefanishyna said, cited the risks posed to “American investments which are being performed through Kazakhstan.”

In early August, Bloomberg reported, citing a U.S. official, that Ukraine had agreed to not strike CPC infrastructure critical to Kazakhstan’s oil exports in the Black Sea, as well as avoid striking non-Russian vessels – provided they’re not separately sanctioned or carrying Russian cargo. 

Could Ukrainian drone strikes target Wildberries facilities in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan? It’s highly unlikely, though not impossible as the war drags on. Such a strike would mark a significant expansion of the conflict and be ruinous to Kyiv’s relations with the Central Asian states, and likely the United States, too, given Washington’s intercession on Kazakhstan’s behalf in regard to the CPC.