Ozon Drone Strikes Squeeze Russia's E-Commerce Supply Chain

From Wildberries to Ozon

Ukraine has widened its long-range drone campaign against Russian e-commerce. After weeks of strikes on Wildberries, the country's largest online retailer, it is now hitting Ozon, the second-largest. On August 22, Ukraine's Defense Ministry made the shift explicit. It said that after Ukrainian units had struck the 15 largest Wildberries logistics hubs, "it's now Ozon's turn," and it described the strikes as aimed at storage centers holding dual-use goods1115. The first confirmed hit was on Ozon's logistics center in Chapayevsk, in Samara region. Ozon halted work there and said people had been injured29. Fire Point, the maker of the FP-1 drones used in the attack, said the site processed more than 215,000 orders a day5.

The strikes came quickly after that. Over the next three nights, Ozon facilities in Orenburg, in Enem in Adygea, in Nevinnomyssk in Stavropol Krai, and in Tyube in Dagestan were all reported targeted47. Later strikes reached a site near Ufa in Bashkortostan, a leased warehouse in Belgorod, a 100,000-square-meter hub in Saratov, and a facility in Taganrog14. Satellite images of the Saratov site, as cited by the Kyiv Independent, showed it completely gutted by fire4.

Markets reacted at once. Ozon shares fell nearly 30% on the Moscow Exchange on August 24, the first trading day after the opening wave11. Shares of Sistema, a major shareholder, dropped more than 13%25. One tally put the decline at 27%, the lowest level since August 2023, and said the company had lost 47% of its value since the start of the year4.

A Supply Chain Built on a Few Giant Buildings

The campaign works because of how Russian e-commerce is built. Wildberries holds about half of the market and Ozon about 30%. Together, the two handle goods and services worth roughly 8.5% of Russia's GDP20. Ozon and Wildberries, along with smaller rivals, employ an estimated 4 million people5. A Kyiv-based think tank uses a narrower measure: the combined revenue of the top three platforms, including Yandex Market. By that count, the figure is about $140.3 billion, or a little over 5% of GDP11. Either way, the sector is too large for the damage to stay contained.

Ozon spent years building its own logistics network so it could serve a huge, thinly populated country. By early 2026 it had more than 5 million square meters of warehouse space, 55 fulfillment centers, about 160 sorting hubs, and over 85,000 pickup points2229. In June it said it planned 15 more logistics complexes this year, with more than 30 billion rubles going into equipment and IT2229. Those investments are concentrated in a small number of very large buildings. In Wildberries' case, coverage describes hubs the size of several dozen soccer fields, which makes them easy to hit and quick to burn20. Some of the damaged Ozon sites, including Adygea and Rostov, were exactly the new southern hubs the company had built to cut delivery times27.

The business model makes the problem worse. Ozon and Wildberries work almost entirely as marketplaces. They store, ship, and collect payment for goods owned by independent sellers, so the inventory that burns mostly belongs to those sellers12. Ozon alone had more than 600,000 merchants in 202416. When a hub goes down, thousands of small businesses lose stock at the same time.

How Disruption Spreads Through the Network

Ozon's own statements show how a single strike moves through the system. After Chapayevsk, it stopped accepting seller deliveries, sent shipments to other facilities, and said affected orders would be filled elsewhere or canceled and refunded5. After the Orenburg strike, it evacuated more than 300 staff, stopped deliveries, and removed the warehouse's stock from its storefront4. After the Ufa-area strike, it again sent incoming seller shipments to other sites1.

Rerouting does not make a loss go away. It moves the pressure onto the rest of the network. Each closure puts more volume on the remaining hubs, adds distance to deliveries, and leaves goods unavailable while they sit in buildings waiting for inspection. Even near misses cost something. Coverage of the Wildberries campaign noted that Ozon suffered evacuations, suspended operations, delayed deliveries, and nervous staff before any of its buildings had actually been damaged4.

Wildberries shows how deep the cuts can go. One analysis estimates that it lost about 32% of its warehouse space between August and September, while sales fell 10% and site traffic dropped 28%14. In the first weekend of strikes alone, goods worth about $1 billion were reportedly destroyed12. Some customers moved to Ozon, whose customer activity reportedly rose 27% over the same period, possibly because it had been hit less often14. That shift helps explain why Kyiv turned to Ozon. As long as the second platform could absorb the first one's customers, attacking Wildberries alone could not cause a shortage across the whole system.

Logistics Costs Were Already High Before the Strikes

The cost of all this is falling on sellers, and they were already under strain. Market participants cited by Ukrainian outlet UNN estimate that commissions and basic logistics charges on Ozon averaged 47.8% of a product's value in the second quarter of 2026, compared with 18.6% a year earlier21. Sellers whose goods are stored in Ozon's own warehouses may now pay close to 55%21. Seller margins have reportedly shrunk to 5–8%21. The rise had been building for some time. A year earlier, one count put Ozon's total burden on sellers at 32.9%, with commission at 22.9% and logistics at 10%24. In April, Ozon also added a fee of up to 8% for delivering warehouse-stored orders between regions26.

Then, on August 28, less than a week after the Ozon strikes began, the company raised logistics rates on most routes and increased commissions for many product categories. Increases ranged from about 5 to 14 percentage points21. Two days later, it halved a commission discount for local sales and dropped it entirely in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Northwest21. The coverage does not tie these price changes to the attacks, and the timing could reflect plans made earlier. Still, they hit sellers just as the network was losing capacity and rerouting goods. Our reading is that sellers are paying for a more fragile system whatever the stated reason.

Shoppers are starting to feel it too. Prices on Russian marketplaces rose about 1.8% year on year in the second quarter, the first noticeable increase in three years21. Meanwhile, Ozon reported second-quarter net profit of 10.1 billion rubles, up from 359 million a year earlier, on revenue that grew 47%21. The platform was gaining just as its sellers were losing ground.

There is no reliable backstop for those sellers. Wildberries added drone attacks to the force majeure clause in its seller contracts shortly before the strikes began. Its owner has paid some compensation and waived some fees, but sellers interviewed by the BBC did not expect to be made whole12. Wildberries chief Tatyana Kim has asked the government for financial help, with state bank VTB expected to play a role20. Vladimir Putin has promised that the state will help rebuild the damaged hubs15. Insurance is a further question. Ozon's own record includes a past warehouse fire for which it failed to recover 4.5 billion rubles from the developer, alongside a separate 6.4 billion ruble insurance payout27.

Where Accounts Differ

Accounts of the damage often conflict. Ozon called the damage at its Bashkortostan site "minor." Analysts at the Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi, working from video footage, placed the warehouse in Blagoveshchensk and reported that it was on fire14. Ozon said its Nevinnomyssk and Adygea facilities were evacuated but not damaged, while Ukraine said Nevinnomyssk was hit4. Casualty counts from the first night also differ, from at least six dead in Reuters reporting to at least ten in a later count98. The central justification is also unproven. Kyiv says the hubs move drone parts and navigation equipment. The BBC noted that dual-use items are openly sold on the platforms, but found no independent confirmation that the targeted warehouses stored them1211.

What It Means

Kyiv's argument is about cost, not one dramatic blow. Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the aim also includes putting pressure on the platforms' creditors, Sberbank and VTB20. Analyst Elina Ribakova said Russia's economy has "stalled," with growth of zero at best this year13. The warehouse strikes add to that pressure. They come on top of fuel shortages caused by attacks on refineries and a 9% year-on-year rise in small-business closures in the first quarter12.

The campaign has costs of its own. Putin warned that Ukraine had opened a "Pandora's box," and Russia has since hit warehouses across Ukraine. One estimate says roughly half of Ukraine's prewar warehouse space has been destroyed, pushing up prices there814. Ukraine has since moved on to Yandex data centers18.

Our reading is that the Ozon strikes show a deliberate strategy. With Wildberries badly damaged, Ozon's spare capacity was the main thing keeping Russian e-commerce from running short. Hitting it is meant to turn scattered losses into rising costs across the whole system, which sellers pay first and shoppers pay next.