Russia’s largest retailer is taking cameras away from its own workers month after eight of its warehouses burned

Russia's biggest online retailer is trying to stop its own workers from filming air defenses. From 3 August, Wildberries has allowed warehouse employees to bring only button mobile phones without cameras to work, a decision taken after staff began filming drones and the aftermath of their strikes and spreading the material, Russian Telegram channels reported.

The ban is a reaction to Ukrainian strikes. On 31 July, employees received a message stating that photo and video recording during air-raid alerts at the warehouses supposedly poses a security threat, could reveal the location of air-defense forces, and violates Russian law, according to "Ostorozhno, novosti".

Wildberries said that after workers were allowed to bring smartphones onto warehouse grounds, cases of filming drones and their attacks, and sharing that footage, were recorded.

The camera ban follows a month of burning warehouses

The timing ties the ban directly to Ukraine's campaign. Ukrainian drones destroyed eight Wildberries warehouses in July, about 15.4% of the marketplace's total storage, killing one employee at its Elektrostal facility.

Workers inside those facilities filmed the strikes as they happened, and the footage spread across social media, documenting the fires and the damage in real time. The camera ban is Wildberries' answer to remove the phones that turned its own employees into witnesses.

The stated reason is security, the effect is silence

Wildberries framed the ban as protection. To "eliminate such risks," from 3 August, only button phones without cameras are allowed at logistics centers, the company said, adding that such devices let workers stay in touch with family while meeting security requirements.

The security rationale doubles as information control. Footage of burning warehouses is evidence of a campaign hurting a flagship Russian company, and by stripping cameras from the workforce, Wildberries removes the most direct source of that evidence. The move is a quiet admission of how much the strikes have landed: a company does not confiscate its workers' phone cameras over attacks that are not doing damage.