UKRAINE STRIKES RUSSIAN RETAIL LOGISTICS AS ECONOMIC TARGETING EXPANDS

Developing story: Casualty figures, operational disruption, state support measures and further strike claims may update.

Ukraine has widened its drone campaign against Russian economic infrastructure by targeting logistics hubs owned by Ozon, Russia’s second-largest online retailer, according to company statements and Reuters reporting. Ozon said four of its southern Russian logistics sites were targeted on Monday, bringing the number of affected facilities to six since August 22. The strikes mark an expansion of Ukraine’s long-range pressure campaign from oil refineries and military-linked infrastructure into the logistics networks that support Russian retail, small businesses and domestic commerce.

Ozon said a logistics hub in Makhachkala, Dagestan, caught fire and halted operations after a drone attack, with preliminary information indicating that several people were injured. The company also reported a fire at a hub near Krasnodar and evacuations from warehouses in Adygeysk and Nevinnomyssk. Earlier, Ozon said work at an Orenburg region logistics centre was halted after drone debris hit the site, with more than 300 people evacuated. Russian regional officials said air defences had repelled drones in some areas, while acknowledging damage to industrial or logistics facilities.

The market reaction was immediate. Reuters reported that Ozon shares fell by almost 30% on the Moscow Exchange on Monday, while shares in its major shareholder, AFK Sistema, dropped more than 13%. Ozon had been one of Russia’s stronger listed companies after the market disruption that followed the start of the full-scale war in 2022. That made the share decline significant beyond the immediate warehouse damage: investors appeared to be pricing in a new risk that large domestic platforms can become repeated targets in Ukraine’s effort to raise the economic cost of the war inside Russia.

The attacks followed weeks of strikes against Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, which Kyiv has described as part of a wider campaign against infrastructure underpinning Moscow’s war effort. Reuters reported that Ukraine has attacked at least two dozen Wildberries warehouses since mid-July, destroying a large part of its storage capacity. Ozon’s turn as a target suggests that the campaign is no longer limited to a single company or a symbolic disruption. It is now affecting a broader layer of Russia’s retail logistics architecture, including warehouses, regional fulfilment centres and seller supply chains.

The strategic logic is different from attacks on refineries, depots or military plants, but the pressure mechanism is similar. Long-range drones can force companies to reroute deliveries, evacuate staff, cancel orders, absorb insurance and security costs, and operate under the possibility of repeated disruption. For Russian consumers, the effect may show up as delayed shipments, unavailable goods or higher logistics costs. For small sellers using online platforms, damaged warehouses can mean lost inventory, suspended deliveries and cash-flow pressure. Those are economic effects rather than conventional battlefield gains, but they can still influence domestic perceptions of the war.

Russia’s government has begun to respond at the state level. On Monday, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree allowing the state to take temporary control of critically important infrastructure if operators are judged to have protected it poorly or failed to repair it quickly after attacks. Reuters reported that the decree covers fuel, energy, industrial, communications, transport and logistics facilities, among others. The timing suggests the Kremlin is treating drone vulnerability as not only a security problem but also a governance and economic-stability issue. It also raises the possibility of greater state intervention in privately owned or publicly traded companies affected by strikes.

The decree follows separate Russian moves to support warehouse operators and platform sellers. Reuters reported that the Finance Ministry had prepared support measures for Wildberries and small businesses on its platform, including tax breaks for up to one year, and that Russia’s central bank had advised creditors to support businesses hit by attacks on warehouses and logistics centres. Those measures are evidence that the strikes are having consequences beyond fire damage. They are creating balance-sheet, credit and tax-policy issues that the Russian state is being asked to manage during a war economy already under pressure.

For Ukraine, the campaign fits a broader pattern of trying to disrupt economic systems that sustain the Russian war effort while also answering Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, ports and infrastructure. Kyiv has increased strikes on oil facilities, logistics nodes and other targets inside Russia as Moscow continues missile and drone attacks on Ukraine. Ukrainian officials argue that bringing the costs of war into Russia is necessary to undermine Moscow’s capacity and willingness to continue the conflict. Russia says such attacks target civilian infrastructure and has continued its own strikes against Ukrainian cities and economic assets.

The Ozon strikes leave several questions unresolved. It is not yet clear how long the affected hubs will remain offline, how much inventory was destroyed, whether insurance or state support will cover losses, or whether Russian air defences can protect dispersed logistics networks from low-cost drones. It is also unclear whether Ukraine intends to keep e-commerce infrastructure as a sustained target set or whether this week’s attacks were a temporary escalation. What is clear is that the economic geography of the war is widening, and Russian civilian-commercial systems are now more visibly exposed to the long-range drone campaign.

Fact-check date: August 24, 2026. Article type: News. Sources: Reuters; Associated Press. Developing note: Casualty figures, operational disruption, state support measures and further strike claims may update.