The scene outside the sleek, modern, 21st-century Moscow office building was more reminiscent of the gritty, gangland violence that gripped the Russian capital in the 1990s.
A scrum of men, some from Chechnya, massed outside the office of Wildberries -- Russia's largest online retailer -- pushing past security guards, breaking a window, and ultimately sparking a gunfight that left two guards dead.
The ex-husband of the company's founder is now under arrest, charged with murder among other things. Company CEO Tatyana Bakalchuk, who is among Russia's richest people, is pushing forward with a merger with an obscure outdoor advertising company, a deal that her husband opposes.
And Muscovites are wondering what role Chechnya's notorious strongman leader is playing in all this -- and whether Russian capital city shoot-outs involving armed Chechens are about to become a thing again.
The saga is also unfolding amid a major redistribution of assets in Russia, in the wake of Western sanctions imposed to punish the country for its all-out invasion of Ukraine.
Here's what you need to know about the bitter and increasingly violent struggle surrounding a company whose platform saw $27 billion in transactions last year, and what it says about doing business in Russia these days.
What Is Wildberries?
It's basically Russia's Amazon: a homegrown e-commerce platform where Russians buy things like clothing or other goods for home delivery.
The company, which was founded 20 years ago by Tatyana Bakalchuk in her apartment as she raised her children, has enjoyed enormous growth over the past decade as more and more Russians gave up mall visits for shopping online.
The company's success was further turbocharged by the COVID-19 lockdowns and then later by Western sanctions, which squeezed many Western products out of the Russian marketplace.
The company's revenues jumped 70 percent last year to 539 billion rubles ($5.8 billion) as Russians looked online for Western goods they can no longer find in stores. Net profit rose even faster, to 19 billion rubles ($205 million). Over $27 billion in transactions were carried out on the platform last year.
Tatyana Bakalchuk, 48, who owns 99 percent of the company and makes all the strategic decisions, recently told state news agency TASS that she expected the value of all transactions to increase by more than half this year, surpassing $40 billion.
Various estimates of her net worth range from $4 billion to $10 billion, making her one of Russia's wealthiest women, if not the outright wealthiest.
Bakalchuk is also purported to have ties to powerful political figures in the government, including Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and his first deputy, Denis Manturov.
So She And Her Husband Are Divorcing, Right?
Bakalchuk's estranged husband Vladislav owns 1 percent of the company's shares even though some reports say he gave her the startup capital needed to launch the business.
In June, when the company announced it was undertaking a merger with an outdoor advertising firm called Russ, things began to get ugly. Vladislav went public with his opposition to the deal, after which Tatyana said she would be filing for divorce.
The merger deal raised eyebrows for outside observers and industry analysts who follow Russian e-commerce and tech companies.
Wildberries profit last year was four times that of Russ, while its revenue was almost 20 times larger. Yet auditors who formerly worked for auditing giant Ernst and Young estimated that Wildberries' overall valuation was just twice that of Russ, which is reportedly controlled by ethnic Armenian brothers Robert and Levan Mirzoyan.
Under the proposed deal, Wildberries would end up with 65 percent of the merged company, with Russ shareholders receiving the remaining 35 percent of shares.
Vladislav Bakalchuk came out publicly against the merger, although his small holdings in the company meant there was little he could do to stop it.
Enter Ramzan Kadyrov, who for more than a decade has run Chechnya as his own personal fiefdom, including, activists say, committing widespread human rights abuses.
Vladislav Bakalchuk turned to Kadyrov -- a longtime friend -- for help in thwarting the merger. A month after the deal was announced, Kadyrov called it a "brazen raid" by the Mirzoyan brothers and "well-known" people from the Caucasus. A "raid" in Russian business jargon refers to a hostile, sometimes violent, takeover of a company.
Shortly after, Tatyana Bakalchuk filed for divorce from Vladislav.
What Happened This Week?
On September 18, Vladislav Bakalchuk showed up at the Wildberries offices in Moscow, along with a group of 20 men, including several Chechens. He claimed he wanted to attend a meeting about the upcoming merger. Tatyana Bakalchuk denied there was any such meeting.
The offices are located immediately adjacent to the Kremlin.
According to videos of the encounter that circulated widely on Telegram, the men pushed and scuffled with security guards, and then with police. At one moment, a man used a club to break a window near the entrance to try and enter the building, and more scuffling erupted.
The Investigative Committee later said two people were killed after shots were fired and two police officers were wounded. More than two dozen people were detained.
In a tearful video that she posted on Telegram, Tatyana Bakalchuk said "armed men raided our offices, started a shoot-out, mayhem, young men died."
"Vladislav, what are you doing? How are you going to look in the eyes of your parents and our children?" she said.
A day later, Vladislav was charged in connection with the incident. Six other men have also been charged and ordered held, pending trial.
The incident grabbed attention not only because of the reputation of Wildberries among Russians but also because it had echoes of the 1990s, when gangland shootings, car bombings, street fights, and strongarm "raids" were commonplace in the Moscow.
President Vladimir Putin's popularity and longevity stems in large part from his image as being the leader who ended that lawlessness.
So What's With The Russ Company?
Corporate registry documents show the company, which owns and operates the largest network of billboards throughout Russia, is 70 percent owned by a little-known businessman named Grigory Sadoyan with the Mirzoyan brothers owning the remainder.
Though Vladislav specifically mentioned Levan Mirzoyan in a video comment calling the merger a raid, little is known about him. Robert, 46, meanwhile, is the face of Russ.
The Mirzoyan brothers, meanwhile, have been scooping up federal and local competitors at a rapid pace with help from state-owned banks. Also reportedly involved is Sulieman Kerimov, a powerful Daghestani billionaire and politician who has been hit by sanctions by the United States as a Kremlin-linked oligarch.
Kadyrov may have been referring to Kerimov when he alleged the role of "well-known" people from the Caucasus in the merger.
Russ has contracts with government-controlled entities like subway systems in several cities, the national railway, and several airports around the country.
In 2019, just before the onset of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Mirzoyan's firm, at the time the fourth-largest outdoor advertising company in the country, bought its largest and third-largest competitors. Last year Mirzoyan's firm bought the second-largest competitor, and today it controls nearly half the country's street billboards, according to one analytical firm.
Industry observers noted that the consolidation, and the rise of Russ, not only occurred quickly, but with almost no pushback from anti-monopoly regulators.
The business newspaper RBK reported that Kerimov was the driver behind Mirzoyan's industry consolidation. In an interview this summer, Mirzoyan acknowledged his friendship with Kerimov, but denied he had any involvement in Russ's meteoric rise.
Mirzoyan may have other powerful connections. One of his previous business partners was a founder of the Night Hockey League, a highly public sporting event whose best-known regular participant is Putin.
Days before announcing the merger, Mirzoyan and Vladislav Bakalchuk wrote a letter to Putin asking him to bless the deal and saying they were seeking to build a digital powerhouse on par with Amazon, Google, or Chinese giant Alibaba.
Putin then gave it his approval and asked economy minister to see it through, according to local media.
What Happens Next?
Vladislav Bakalchuk's defense lawyers have rejected the charges filed against their client.
As for Kadyrov's involvement, the arrests, including Bakalchuk's, may indicate Kadyrov failed to understand that Putin supported the merger, says Ilya Shumanov, a top director with the anti-corruption organization Transparency International-Russia
"They thought that they would come to the office or scare people, and quickly this situation would somehow return to its previous course," Shumanov told Current Time.
Kadyrov likely will try to shift the blame to Vladislav Bakalchuk, Shumanov predicts, and he will also likely seek a meeting with Putin, as he has done in the past following negative press. If there is not a meeting, however, it would be a bad sign for the Chechen leader, he adds.
"The absence of this meeting will be perceived by Kadyrov as an excommunication or as a negative," Shumanov said.
