Russia’s richest woman accused her estranged husband of trying to forcibly capture her company with a retinue of armed men on Wednesday, as the couple’s bitter dispute over Russia’s biggest online retailer escalated into a shootout at the company’s offices in downtown Moscow, leaving two dead, five wounded and dozens detained.
The dispute between the couple, Tatyana and Vladislav Bakalchuk, has been at the center of Russia’s business world for months, even drawing the involvement of the strongman leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. At stake is not only their marriage but the fate of the company Ms. Bakalchuk founded, Wildberries, a marketplace that processes more than 12 million orders every day and had sales of more than $27 billion in 2023, according to news reports.
The shooting took place just opposite the Kremlin, in the lobby of one of the most prestigious office buildings in Moscow, according to a video from the scene that was published by state news agencies. The video showed burly men bickering, with at least one of them brandishing and then shooting a gun.
Mr. Bakalchuk told RBC, a Russian business news outlet, that he had arrived at the offices on Wednesday with “colleagues” to conduct “peaceful negotiations” about the construction of new warehouses.
“But at the entrance I was attacked by security guards,” said Mr. Bakalchuk, who has a small stake in the company. He added that one of his associates was wounded in the skirmish.
Ms. Bakalchuk denied her husband’s claims, saying in a statement posted on the social media site Telegram that no negotiations between them were planned. Ms. Bakalchuk, the majority owner of Wildberries, added that her husband had made a “failed attempt” of a “corporate raid.”
Russian Investigative Committee, the country’s equivalent to the F.B.I., opened a criminal case into the incident. The agency said in a statement that two Russian law enforcement officers who arrived at the scene were wounded, without provided further details.
Two people died in the shootout, investigators said. Russian state news agencies identified them as guards of the office building. Twenty-eight people were detained, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency.
Some of the men involved were martial arts fighters, Russian news media reported.
The conflict over the company became public in July after Mr. Bakalchuk said he opposed planes to merge Wildberries with Russ, an outdoor advertising firm. In July, he told RBC that if the couple divorced, he would want half of the company. At the end of July, Ms. Bakalchuk filed for a divorce.
The dispute has also been cast in terms of a culture war over conservative family values, a recurring theme in Russian media. In July, Mr. Bakalchuk made a public appeal to Mr. Kadyrov, the Chechen leader, saying that his wife “left home” and “got connected with a strange company.”
In a video with Mr. Bakalchuk posted on YouTube in July, Mr. Kadyrov said that he was against the destruction of a family and that Wildberries had been attacked in a corporate raid. Mr. Kadyrov vowed to “stand” on Mr. Vladislav’s side “until the end.”
“The wife must return home,” Mr. Kadyrov said in the video.
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