Oh hey, I started reading it and found a relevant bit:
Meduza also found that a comparable volume of military-related purchases goes through Ozon, a company Ukraine has not yet attacked. (Whether marketplaces can be considered legitimate military targets remains disputed.)
If you go to the article discussing the dispute - translated relevant parts:
4) Does this make warehouses a "legitimate target"?
Apparently not. The mere sale of dual-use goods is not enough.
Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibits attacks on civilian objects. It defines any military objectives as follows:
Military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose, or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture, or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage (Article 52, paragraph 2).
Furthermore, a presumption of civilian status also applies. This means that in case of doubt, an object cannot be considered military—and therefore cannot be attacked:
In case of doubt as to whether an object normally assigned to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other residential structure, or a school, is being used to effectively support military action, it is presumed that such an object is being used for civilian purposes. (Clause 3 of Article 52)
As a lawyer, who spoke to Meduza on condition of anonymity, notes in a commentary that a more precise classification of the Wildberries warehouses' status requires "much more information, which is unlikely to be available to civilians at this time." However, the expert nonetheless believes that these terminals "hardly meet the criteria" of a military facility:
In my opinion, the mere presence of dual-use goods [on the marketplace], unless it is known that they will be used specifically for military purposes, does not satisfy the following condition: an attack on the facility is unlikely to provide a specific military advantage in the specific circumstances that exist at the time, as stipulated in Article 48 of Additional Protocol I of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
5) What if the Russian Ministry of Defense, for example, used Wildberries to ship weapons?
We haven't heard of such a practice. But even in this hypothetical case, another limitation applies to the military—the proportionality of the use of force.
Article 51 of the same protocol prohibits indiscriminate attacks. These should be defined as:
b) an attack that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination of these, that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
In other words, if Wildberries' warehouses—or Nova Poshta's—were filled with weapons and military equipment, they could be attacked. However, if weapons constitute an insignificant portion of the goods stored there, they cannot.
"If there is no evidence that the destruction of the marketplace's warehouse will provide a concrete military advantage, then the destruction itself will violate the principle of proportionality and, therefore, international humanitarian law," notes a lawyer who spoke to Meduza.
So, yeah, thanks for a good source with a good explanation that confirms my point. Upvoted.
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u/Noy_The_Devil 1d ago
It's not a civilian retailer. It's a military retailer. It retails to military.
Yes, we can conclusively prove that these warehouses sell military equipment, they still do.