Ukraine opens a second front against Russian ecommerce with four Ozon warehouses hit in three days

Ukraine opens a second front against Russian ecommerce with four Ozon warehouses hit in three days

A Ukrainian drone hits the Ozon warehouse in Orenburg and sets it on fire. 

Ukrainian drones have hit four Ozon logistics centres in three days, opening a second front in Operation Wildberries campaign that has spent the summer burning Russia’s biggest online retailer

The run began on August 22 with a strike on Ozon’s warehouse in Samara region, the first ever strike on the company by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). Drones hit its Orenburg site the following day, then Krasnodar and Makhachkala in Dagestan overnight on August 23-24. Ozon confirmed each one on its own Telegram channel and said operations were suspended indefinitely at the last two

“A logistics centre in Makhachkala was also hit by a drone attack. All systems functioned as normal, and we promptly evacuated the staff. Preliminary reports indicate several injuries,” the company said, according to TASS. “We have hidden the items stored at the warehouse from the marketplace storefront, they cannot be ordered for the time being. Orders being fulfilled from this warehouse will be cancelled, and customers will be refunded.”

Ozon shares fell nearly 13% on the Moscow Exchange after drone strikes on marketplace warehouses. Ozon shares fell 12.7% after the main trading session opened on the Moscow Exchange, to RUB2,600. This followed a previous 12% plunge after the first Wildberries warehouse was hit at the end of July

Ukraine has been attacking Russia’s marketplaces for months as a warehouse war escalates. Both sides are now targeting each other’s civilian economy and Russian President Vladimir Putin warned at the weekend that by targeting the retail sector Bankova, Ukraine’s presidential administration, had opened a “Pandora’s box” as Russia has begun to try to systematically destroy Ukraine’s retail infrastructure in retaliation.

Until last weekend the campaign was almost entirely about Wildberries; hitting Ozon four times in seventy-two hours turns a single-company squeeze into a strike on the sector, and the sector is where a large share of Russian retail now happens; between them the two companies account for circa 15% of Russia’s entire retail turnover

The Orenburg site was the biggest of the four and the biggest Ozon runs; Ukrainian drones set fire to it on August 23. The governor of Orenburg region, Yevgeny Solntsev, said air defences downed six drones over the region and that two industrial facilities were hit by debris. Ozon said it evacuated more than 300 people and halted work at the centre. Russia’s defence ministry said it downed 328 Ukrainian drones overnight on the day o of the attack.

Krasnodar burned hardest. Local Telegram channels posted footage shortly after midnight, and TASS reported a major fire at the warehouse with no casualties, quoting the company’s press service. Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said the region was repelling a mass attack; separately, and away from the warehouses, he said drone debris fell on a private children’s centre in Krasnodar, killing two children and injuring seven, with two adults hospitalised.

In Dagestan the acting head of the republic, Fyodor Shchukin, said falling debris damaged an infrastructure facility in Kumtorkalinsky district and started a fire in warehouse premises, with no casualties. Open-source footage geolocated to Tiube in Dagestan showed what a mapping account identified as strikes by Ukrainian FP-1 long-range drones, with fire already burning from an earlier impact – suggesting at least two separate hits on the same site.

Why the marketplaces

Ozon is Russia’s second-largest online retailer and, unlike a refinery, it is not a hardened target. Its logistics centres are large, lightly built, full of combustible stock and sited in the open on the edge of provincial cities – which is exactly what makes them cheap to burn and expensive to lose

Ozon’s shares fell 12% in July when the Wildberries strikes first rattled the sector, and by August the company was including drone-strike coverage in its own results commentary. The Association of Digital Platforms has asked the Russian state to cover the losses from warehouses burned in Ukrainian strikes, and Moscow has weighed tax deferrals for the sellers caught in the middle. The exposure runs past Russia’s borders: Turkish retailer Koton took a hit to its own stock when Wildberries warehouses holding its goods went up.

The mirror campaign

Russia is running the same playbook against Ukrainian retail and logistics centres as a new dimention in the tit-for-tat missile war that has escalated since summer. Strikes on retail and logistics sites killed at least 18 people in the week to August 24

A double-tap drone strike on the Soniachna Galereia shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih on August 21 killed 16 people and injured 130, destroying a store belonging to Danish home-goods chain JYSK. Drones hit the Oscar mall in Kherson overnight into August 22, the second attack on the site in a month, gutting the retail halls. Aurora’s distribution centre near Poltava was struck again the same day; the chain says its stores are still open despite supply delays. A ballistic missile hit a warehouse, vehicles and a filling station in Kyiv region’s Boryspil district, killing two and injuring eight.

Cosmetics chain EVA lost its Brovary distribution centre to a drone on August 18, at a cost co-owner Ruslan Shostak put at about UAH1bn ($22mn). The chain has lost five warehouses and 15 stores since the full-scale invasion began

On the morning of August 24 – Independence Day – Russia struck Odesa region again, setting fire to two Epicentr home-improvement hypermarkets in Odesa. “The main strike hit food storage facilities and energy infrastructure,” said Oleh Kiper, head of the Odesa Oblast Military Administration. Yuliia Chudnovets of Epicentr’s press office told Ukrainska Pravda that two of the chain’s Odesa stores had been hit and that casualty information was still being gathered.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko put the cost of each Russian attack on the capital at about $12mn, with more than 4,000 buildings damaged and strikes arriving on average almost twice a week. Russia’s campaign against the Black Sea ports could likewise cost Ukraine 5.3% of GDP by 2027, on one estimate

Neither side is going to stop

Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on August 23 that Russia had rejected proposals to limit long-range strikes on economic targets, which removes the only obvious off-ramp. Both governments have concluded that an economy is easier to break than an army

What the four Ozon strikes suggest is a widening rather than an escalation – the same weapons, pointed at more of the same kind of thing. Ukraine’s drone campaign has already moved from Russian grain terminals to the ships themselves; the marketplaces are the retail equivalent. And the companies at the sharp end keep posting results that look nothing like the damage: Nova Poshta lifted profits 24% while Russia burned down its depots, because in a country where nothing else still delivers, it can charge whatever it needs to.

#Russia#Ukraine#UkraineRussiaWar#drones#ecommerce#retail#infrastructure#Ozon
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