Kyrgyzstan’s garment industry, long dependent on Russia’s Wildberries marketplace for sales, is grappling with a cascade of disruptions that have shuttered thousands of sewing workshops and left entrepreneurs facing mounting losses through 2026.
The crisis traces back to autumn 2025, when Russia tightened import documentation requirements for goods crossing the Kazakhstan-Russia border, according to Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Economy and Commerce. Zarlyk Imankulov, a board member of industry group Legprom, said the new paperwork rules disrupted an entire selling season and inflicted colossal losses on producers, with 4,000 to 5,000 workshops closing as a result.
Just as businesses began to adapt, a fresh blow arrived in mid-2026 in the form of drone strikes on Wildberries logistics infrastructure inside Russia. The first attacks hit facilities in Kotovsk and Elektrostal on July 18, followed by a second wave on July 22 targeting sites in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk. Wildberries also evacuated a sorting center in Simferopol and temporarily suspended operations at complexes near St. Petersburg. By early August, more than 1.18 million square meters of the company’s warehouse space had reportedly been affected, with Wildberries’ founder citing losses in the billions of dollars.
The human toll extended to Kyrgyz nationals working at the affected sites. Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Ministry said two citizens were injured and hospitalized in Elektrostal, while two others evacuated the area but lost personal belongings and documents.
For sewing enterprises, the damage compounded quickly. One entrepreneur told local media that losses from the attacks alone reached tens of millions of soms, calling the strikes yet another setback layered atop the earlier border crisis. Factory owners across the sector have reported order cancellations, halted production and unpaid leave for workers as a lack of working capital took hold. Precise figures on aggregate losses to Kyrgyz businesses have not yet been disclosed, though the Ministry of Economy and Commerce has begun collecting data from affected enterprises and holding working meetings with Wildberries representatives to discuss compensation and the restoration of logistics.
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In response, authorities have rolled out support measures including a zero tax rate for the sewing industry through the end of 2026, along with preferential financing for entrepreneurs. Business leaders are also pushing for structural changes to reduce dependency on Russian infrastructure. Temir Sariyev, president of Kyrgyzstan’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has proposed relocating part of Wildberries’ warehouse capacity to Kyrgyzstan, arguing that concentrating storage in one location leaves producers exposed. The idea was raised at a Kyrgyz-Russian Business Council meeting focused on lifting bilateral trade turnover to $5 billion.
Separately, Kyrgyz manufacturers are accelerating efforts to enter Kazakhstan’s e-commerce marketplaces to offload inventory that has become harder to move through Russian channels, according to the Association of E-commerce Entrepreneurs of Kazakhstan. Russia and Kazakhstan had already begun integrating their Wildberries and Ozon marketplace operations before the drone strikes, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin has said, a process that has taken on added urgency since.
Wildberries itself has frozen its investment program and paused new merger and acquisition activity as it absorbs losses estimated near 100 billion rubles, redirecting resources toward supporting affected workers and the families of those killed in the strikes.
Adding to the sector’s uncertainty, Bishkek’s plan to close the Madina market — the country’s largest textile trading hub — for reconstruction has triggered protests from traders, who warn that relocation costs could push up prices across the supply chain. How the government and industry navigate these overlapping pressures will determine whether Kyrgyzstan’s sewing sector can preserve production capacity and jobs going forward.