Airstrikes on Amazon Warehouses?

Some folks asked my thoughts on the legality under the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) of theUkrainian campaign to strike Wildberries warehouses. I wasn’t familiar enough to offer original thoughts but here’s an appraisal from Alexey Kovalev:

Look closer, however, and Wildberries makes an astonishingly obvious target. The retailer has developed into a vast supply channel for Russia’s war. With official military logistics beset by shortages, delays, incompetence, and corruption, Russian units at the front are dependent on private deliveries and donations of supplies and equipment, often crowdfunded; countless fighters also order on their own account. Until it was hastily scrubbed from the site over the weekend, Wildberries featured a dedicated catalog category “Everything for the SVO,” using the Russian acronym for “special military operation.” The catalog included more than 200,000 listings, including not just war-themed coffee mugs but also thousands of battlefield items, such as body armor, tactical helmets, and custom drone components such as drop rigs and tail fins tailored to Russian projectile grenades. (The items are still listed but now under other categories.)

Many listings come with a “tested in the SVO” badge and official Russian certification stamps, meaning that this trade is actively encouraged by the platform. As of last week, top results in the SVO category included a Br2 military helmet, an armor vest with combat-fire-tested ballistic plates, and a combat medical kit; one-day delivery was available for an extra fee. Verified buyers gave these top items near-perfect star ratings, with buyers writing that they were ordering “for the guys in the SVO.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X last week that the strikes were destroying “logistics hubs involved in supplying the Russian army with drone components, navigation equipment, and other gear.”

Under international humanitarian law, a civilian object becomes a legitimate target when its function offers a “definite military advantage.” Wildberries easily passes that test—unlike Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian apartment blocks, shopping centers, and maternity clinics. Russian military bloggers have been explicit about Wildberries’ indispensability to front-line soldiers, posting screenshots of some of the most in-demand items, such as first-person-view drones and their spare parts. It seems that the company anticipated becoming a target: Shortly before the first strikes on its warehouses, Wildberries changed its terms and conditions to add drone and missile attacks to its force majeure clause, absolving a platform of liability for destroyed stock.

We’re in tricky territory here with respect to the Law of Armed Conflict, because strikes that are intended to undermine a system of military logistics are allowable, while strikes intended to cause civilian economic distress are not. Wildberries warehouses are classic dual-use targets in that they serve both purposes. Here’s Michael Schmitt at Just Security:

That leaves use and purpose – the primary criteria through which civilian objects become military. “Use” refers to an object’s present function; “purpose” concerns its intended future use. An object makes an effective contribution by use when supporting military action now (AP I Commentary, ¶ 2023; DoD Law of War Manual § 5.6.6.1). Examples include a bridge over which the enemy’s military supplies are passing or a storage tank currently holding POL (petroleum, oil, and lubricants) for the enemy forces. President Zelensky invoked this as the justification for the Wildberries warehouse attacks, stating they were being used to supply components for drone production and navigation equipment. If accurate, that use makes an effective contribution to Russia’s military action, and the warehouses were military objectives when struck (subject to satisfaction of the second “definite military advantage” criterion discussed below). Whether the factual predicate was accurate is a separate question, one depending on the quality of the intelligence and the reasonableness of relying on it. But assuming it was accurate, the first prong was clearly satisfied. 

Importantly, the extent of civilian use is legally irrelevant to whether an object qualifies as a military objective (though it may come into play in a proportionality or precautions analysis, discussed below). Once an object makes an effective contribution to military action, the first prong is satisfied; that it also performs substantial civilian functions has no bearing on its qualification as a military objective for distinction purposes. A power plant supplying a command and control node contributes effectively to military action even if an overwhelming percentage of its output is for civilian consumption (Study Group, pp. 335–36; DoD Law of War Manual § 5.6.1.2). This is the sense in which the term “dual-use” is often used, although it is not a legal term of art.   

Schmitt is very careful here; individual warehouses could be legitimate targets during the time in which they are being used for military purposes, but care needs to be taken and other requirements (proportionality, etc) must also be taken into consideration. My sense is that the strikes here should be regarded as lawful but are close enough to the line to merit an enhanced degree of scrutiny.

The broader problem is that modern LOAC tends to assume the kind of centralized system of military logistics that emerged in the late 19th century and came into full bloom in the 20th. In the Russia-Ukraine War both sides have relied upon decentralized systems of logistics that often place private actors at their center; it is not unusual, for example, for individual Ukrainian civilian firms to undertake critical logistical roles for specific units operating at the front. This brings dual-use questions to the fore and makes everything a bit twitchy, with plenty of judgment calls. But then LOAC is less about clear cut, enforceable legal determinations and more about shaping the behavior of military organizations, and it seems that in the Ukrainian case at least there’s been thinking about how the strikes in question fit into a plausible legal framework.