An Ugly Divorce, Russia’s Richest Woman and a Deadly Shooting in Moscow

The Russian businesswoman Tatyana V. Bakalchuk has been locked in a dispute with her estranged husband for months over the fate of her company, Wildberries.

He came with armed men he called “colleagues.” She stationed guards in the lobby of her billion-dollar business.

Their divorce, and their dispute over the fate of Russia’s biggest online retailer, appeared to escalate into a full-blown shootout in downtown Moscow on Wednesday, leaving two dead, five injured and dozens detained just across from the Kremlin.

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 a marriage but the future of the company Ms. Bakalchuk founded, Wildberries, a marketplace that processes more than 12 million orders every day and had sales that neared $27 billion in 2023, according to Ms. Bakalchuk and Tass, a state news agency.

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.”

In a later video statement posted on Telegram Ms. Bakalchuk, said, crying: “Armed men raided our office, initiated a shootout, a mayhem, young men died.”

“Vladislav, what are you doing? How are you going to look in the eyes of your parents and our children?”

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 providing 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.

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 plans 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.