In early October 2025, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) of Russia delivered a binding directive to two of the nation’s largest e-commerce platforms: Wildberries and Ozon. The order compels both marketplaces to revise their operational terms with third-party sellers and report on these improvements by October 30.
The FAS’s demands follow waves of formal complaints from sellers, who argue that newly introduced platform mechanisms—ranging from inventory management algorithms to return logistics and the conditions of additional services—have resulted in disproportionate operational and financial burdens.
Wildberries must redesign its “product balance index” policies and offer sellers more control over supplementary services. Ozon, meanwhile, is required to guarantee clearer procedures for the retrieval of goods from warehouses and address the high incidence of account blocks erroneously affecting legitimate merchants.
This step by the regulator is a direct response to the increased market power wielded by Wildberries and Ozon. Together, these two firms command up to 80% of the Russian e-commerce market, a position recently acknowledged in official government analyses. Such dominance, in the field of digital retail, brings these companies under heightened antitrust scrutiny and obliges them to adhere more closely to fair market practices.
The FAS expert council’s recent investigation highlighted that revised mechanisms—such as mandatory inventory thresholds, automatic discounting without seller approval, and logistical requirements for product withdrawal—do not align with principles of openness and may be construed as the imposition of deleterious conditions on counterparties, potentially infringing upon sellers' autonomy and competitive rights.
Structural Effects on E-Commerce Systems
The dispute between sellers and marketplaces over rules for inventory management and returns underscores a broader technological and infrastructural dilemma within Russian e-commerce. Both Wildberries and Ozon have shifted toward algorithmic governance of seller operations.
Most notably, the adoption of product indices, automated repricing tools, and the streamlining of fulfillment models represents attempts to optimize catalog efficiency and maximize assortments. However, these measures can introduce unintended exclusionary effects on sellers, especially SMEs, who may lack the automation capacity or technical know-how to rapidly adapt.
Product Feeds and Catalog Standards
Central to these changes is the increasing reliance on automatic synchronization and real-time updating of product feeds. Inventory algorithms like the Wildberries balance index can force sellers to maintain higher inventory levels on platform, potentially skewing stock allocation decisions and introducing volatility into supply chains.
Automated discounts and dynamic re-ranking (where the platform decides what is “attractively priced” and adjusts promotion eligible SKUs accordingly) disrupt traditional seller control over product positioning and pricing strategy. This impacts catalog quality, as sellers may have to frequently adjust feed parameters to comply with fluid marketplace rules or risk penalization.
Additionally, such mechanisms place significant demands on integration infrastructure. APIs connecting seller ERP systems and marketplace platforms must now accommodate higher-frequency data updates and support instant validation of changes in product status, price, and availability. Sellers relying on static or low-code data management tools encounter limitations, as marketplaces nudge toward more sophisticated, AI-assisted catalog management.
Instances of incorrect automated account blocking, as cited in FAS proceedings, are often outcomes of unsupervised or error-prone algorithmic enforcement—a scenario exacerbated by discrepancies in product data feeds or inadvertent infractions of poorly documented rules.
Listing Completeness and Quality
Another critical challenge emerges around the completeness and reliability of product listings. Algorithmically enforced penalties for perceived inventory imbalances, low turnover, or non-compliance with promotion participation norms may result in product delisting or suppressed visibility.
For sellers, especially those with large, heterogeneous catalogs, this incentivizes a shift toward greater automation in content management. Maintaining high-quality, richly attributed product cards—photos, descriptions, technical specifications—becomes paramount, not only for user experience but as a hedge against automated interventions that could result in punitive actions or lost sales opportunities.
Sellers lacking access to advanced product information management (PIM) systems or generative AI tools for content creation face heightened risk of catalog degradation and diminished revenue.
Time-to-Market and Assortment Expansion
Platform-driven procedural rigidity impacts not only current sellers but also potential market entrants or product line expansions. Protracted or unpredictable processes for inventory submission, returns, and removal (e.g., Ozon’s limitations in granting slots for warehouse pick-up) can substantially slow the introduction of new SKUs or suppliers.
Automated review systems, ostensibly designed to expedite processes, may inadvertently create bottlenecks—often due to system bugs or false positives in risk assessment algorithms.
This influences the overall pace of assortment refresh; smaller brands and niche suppliers, in particular, are vulnerable to operational friction that outweighs potential benefits of marketplace access. For the ecosystem as a whole, this stymies innovation and reduces diversity, as barriers to fast onboarding and reliable listing deter new entrants and limit consumer choice.
Automation: No-Code, Low-Code, AI
The rapid rollout of these procedural innovations by dominant marketplaces highlights an industry-wide pivot toward no-code, low-code, and AI-powered content management solutions.
For sellers seeking to navigate shifting compliance requirements, the adoption of flexible catalog automation—systems that integrate PIM, compliance verification, automated pricing recommendations, and content enrichment tools—becomes central.
The events of October 2025 demonstrate that regulatory guidance, not just technological readiness, will govern the pace and direction of such interventions. External pressure from oversight bodies can force reconsideration or recalibration of AI-driven marketplace policies, particularly where accountability and transparency are found lacking.
While automation offers potential efficiency gains, overreliance on opaque or inflexible protocols risks amplifying systemic errors, undermining trust, and ultimately reducing ecosystem resilience.
For platform operators, the challenge lies in balancing algorithmic optimization (for scale and user experience) with robust, transparent mechanisms for recourse and adjustment—especially where the livelihoods of tens of thousands of SMEs are at stake.
Broader Market Implications
The FAS intervention serves as a stress test for the self-regulation hypothesis that has long underpinned Russian digital commerce. As the moratorium on scheduled inspections for IT companies lapses, regulatory actions signal a transition into an era of increased state oversight, particularly for actors recognized as collectively dominant.
Outcomes from this episode are expected to inform not only compliance strategies at Wildberries and Ozon but also broader standards for digital marketplaces in Russia and, potentially, across comparable jurisdictions.
The events reveal a fundamental tension between innovation in algorithmic commerce and the imperative of fair, transparent seller relations. The trajectory of procedural updates and FAS’s evolving stance will be critical variables in shaping the future infrastructural landscape—not only for product feeds and content management but for the digital marketplace ecosystem as a whole.
For more on the topic, see analysis by NotPIM and coverage by BRICS Competition.
The FAS intervention underscores a pressing need for effective product information management (PIM) among e-commerce sellers. The increased reliance on automated systems by marketplaces necessitates a strong foundation of accurate, high-quality product data.
This means managing product catalogs efficiently. NotPIM enables merchants to be more resilient in the face of evolving marketplace requirements by facilitating easy adaptation to data feed updates, ensuring clear listing completeness, and giving them a clear competitive advantage over competitors, thereby protecting their ability to compete effectively.