Ukrainian drone strikes hit warehouses of Russia’s second largest online retailer

A wave of Ukrainian drone strikes struck warehouses belonging to Ozon, Russia’s second largest online retailer, early Monday, sparking fires across several southern regions and injuring multiple people as Kyiv widens its campaign against Russian logistics networks.

Ozon confirmed that its facilities in Krasnodar, Dagestan, Stavropol and Adygea caught fire following the overnight strikes and that the attacks left several employees injured. The company reported that a fire broke out at a logistics center in Makhachkala, in the Dagestan region, after a drone strike hit the site around 5am local time on Monday. A separate fire tore through one of Ozon’s logistics centers in Krasnodar, located roughly 700 kilometers east of the Dagestan facility.

Russia’s defense ministry said three children died in the Krasnodar strike. The country’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova Belova, identified the victims as aged 13, 15 and 16, and said six additional children had been hospitalized. Ozon evacuated workers from its facilities in Adygeysk, in the Adygea region, and Nevinnomyssk, in the Stavropol region, following the attacks.

Video footage circulating on social media captured the strikes in progress, including one clip showing a drone hitting a warehouse in the Orenburg region and another showing thick smoke and flames rising from the Dagestan facility.

Ozon shares dropped by as much as 12 percent on the Moscow Exchange on Monday morning, while shares in AFK Sistema, the private equity firm that holds a major stake in the company, fell nearly 13 percent. Asked whether the government would step in to support Ozon financially, the Kremlin said it was working with business representatives to explore various options for assisting the company through the situation.

Monday’s strikes followed an attack a day earlier on Ozon’s facility in the Samara region, which the company said also left workers injured. After that strike, Ukraine’s defense ministry said systematic attacks on storage centers holding dual use goods complicate Russian military logistics and damage the broader Russian economy, adding that after Ukrainian forces struck 15 major logistics hubs belonging to Wildberries, Ozon became the next target.

Ukraine has spent weeks striking facilities belonging to Wildberries, the country’s largest online retailer, arguing the company represents a legitimate military target because it allegedly supplies components used by Russian forces, a claim Moscow denies. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that Ukraine had opened what he called Pandora’s box by striking economic targets, and he vowed that Russia would retaliate against what he described as Kyiv’s most sensitive economic sectors.

Russia has struck Ukrainian civilian infrastructure repeatedly since launching its full scale invasion in 2022, and recent Russian attacks have targeted Ukrainian warehouses and cargo terminals as well. In Ukraine’s Odesa region, overnight strikes hit food storage facilities and energy infrastructure, injuring five people, according to regional head Oleg Kiper. Both Russia and Ukraine deny deliberately targeting civilians in their respective campaigns.

Founded in 1998, Ozon ranks as one of Russia’s earliest online retailers and trails only Wildberries in scale and market presence, operating pickup points and delivery boxes throughout the country. The two companies’ logos frequently appear together at shared pickup locations across Russia, and both have earned comparisons to Amazon, with an estimated 85 to 90 percent of Russia’s economically active population using their services. In many remote areas lacking traditional retail options, residents rely heavily on the platforms for clothing and household goods.

Unlike Amazon, which sells products directly in addition to running its marketplace, Wildberries and Ozon function almost entirely as intermediaries, connecting independent sellers with buyers, handling storage, delivery and payment processing. As a result, much of the financial damage from the recent strikes falls on the individual businesses that rely on the platforms rather than on the companies themselves.

The expanding strikes on retail logistics networks mark a shift in the war’s economic dimension, bringing the conflict into closer contact with everyday life for millions of Russians who depend on these platforms for basic goods. The Kremlin has denied that online retail platforms serve any role in supplying the Russian military, even as Ukraine continues to frame the strikes as targeting infrastructure that supports the war effort.