Medvedev attacks Stubb as Wildberries becomes a symbol of long-range war
Dmitry Medvedev used personal insults against Finland’s Alexander Stubb after the Finnish president backed deeper Ukrainian strikes inside Russia. The clash is less about one retailer than about a strategy of raising the economic and political cost of war.
Dmitry Medvedev has turned a debate over Ukraine’s long-range strike strategy into a personal attack on Finland’s president. The deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council used a series of insults against Alexander Stubb on the Russian platform MAX, calling him a “real moron” and a fool while questioning his professional competence.
The immediate trigger was Stubb’s visit to Kyiv on 23–24 August, where he joined Nordic and Baltic leaders and took part in a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing supporting Ukraine.
At a news conference, Stubb argued that Ukraine’s partners should help it expand the ability to strike deep inside Russia with missiles and drones. His reasoning was strategic rather than symbolic: raising the cost of the war for Moscow, he said, can create pressure for negotiations.
Stubb cited logistics centres operated by Russian e-commerce company Wildberries as an example. He also said that 65% of Russians wanted the war to end and claimed that strikes on such logistics facilities had added another 10 percentage points to that figure.
Medvedev recast this as an argument about “Russia’s defeat through strikes on Wildberries”. The publicly reported wording from Stubb does not support that literal characterisation. He did not present the destruction of a marketplace warehouse as proof of Russian defeat. He described long-range attacks as one component of a broader effort to impose economic, logistical and political costs.
The polling claim is more complicated. Independent research does show substantial Russian support for negotiations or a ceasefire. ExtremeScan reported in June that 64–65% of Russian respondents had consistently backed a ceasefire involving mutual concessions over roughly the previous year and a half. The Levada Center recorded 61% support for moving to peace negotiations in January. Neither source, however, demonstrates that attacks on Wildberries produced a 10-point shift.
That distinction matters because logistics has become a strategic category in the war. Ukraine has increasingly attacked refineries, warehouses and transport nodes far from the front line, arguing that these facilities help sustain Russia’s military effort. AP has reported the destruction of a major Wildberries depot in the Tambov region. Ukraine says the company supplies equipment used by the Russian military; Wildberries denies that claim.
The Kremlin’s institutional response has followed a familiar line. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Stubb’s support for deeper Ukrainian strikes placed him in a “party of war”. Moscow has repeatedly framed Western military assistance as the main obstacle to peace talks. Stubb’s argument is the inverse: without greater pressure on Russia, he says, meaningful negotiations are unlikely.
For Finland, this debate is inseparable from geography. The country shares a long border with Russia and is now a NATO member. Stubb returned from Ukraine and reiterated that supporting Kyiv remains a central priority of Finnish foreign and security policy. He also stressed that Russia will remain Finland’s neighbour and that the future relationship will depend on Russia’s own behaviour.
For the wider European security system, the dispute highlights a changing concept of pressure. The war is no longer confined to the battlefield or to sanctions. It increasingly reaches supply chains, energy assets, commercial logistics and the domestic economic environment inside Russia.
That also creates legal, political and escalation risks. Commercial infrastructure can sit in a grey zone when it has both civilian and alleged military functions. Governments backing Ukraine must decide how much capability to provide, while Moscow is likely to keep presenting those decisions as direct Western participation in the conflict.
Medvedev’s insults are therefore the loudest part of the story, but not the most consequential one. The underlying contest is over whether long-range economic pressure can change Russian behaviour without producing uncontrolled escalation. Wildberries has become a shorthand for that argument because it connects the front line to ordinary commerce. The next phase will depend less on rhetoric than on which targets Ukraine can reach, which systems its partners provide, and whether increased costs translate into any movement at the negotiating table.
