A coordinated wave of Ukrainian drone attacks has targeted warehouses and logistics hubs operated by Ozon, Russia’s second-largest e-commerce retailer, igniting large-scale fires across multiple southern Russian regions and leaving multiple casualties in its wake, as the ongoing war in Ukraine expands to critical domestic economic infrastructure on Russian territory.
Ozon confirmed Monday that overnight drone assaults sparked blazes at its facilities in Krasnodar, Dagestan, Stavropol and Adygea, with multiple people injured in the attacks. The earliest reported strike hit a logistics center in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, at approximately 5 a.m. local time, followed by a major fire at a separate Ozon hub in Krasnodar, located around 435 miles west of the Dagestan site. All staff were evacuated from Ozon facilities in Adygeysk (Adygea) and Nevinnomyssk (Stavropol) as a safety precaution.
Russia’s defense ministry announced that three children, aged 13, 15 and 16, were killed in the Krasnodar strike, with six additional children hospitalized for injuries. Multiple social media videos of the attacks, including footage of a drone strike on an Ozon warehouse in Orenburg and thick plumes of smoke rising from the burning Dagestan facility, have been verified by the BBC.
Monday’s attacks follow a strike on an Ozon site in Russia’s Samara region a day earlier, which also left workers injured. In a statement following the Samara attack, Ukraine’s defense ministry framed targeting of Russian e-commerce logistics hubs as a deliberate military strategy, noting that systematic strikes on dual-use storage centers disrupt Russian military logistics and damage the broader Russian economy. The statement added that after Ukrainian forces hit 15 major logistics hubs belonging to Wildberries—Russia’s largest e-commerce retailer—it was Ozon’s turn to be targeted. Ukraine has long classified Wildberries as a legitimate military target, claiming it supplies components to the Russian military, a claim Moscow consistently denies.
The escalation of strikes against economic targets drew a sharp threat of retaliation from Russian President Vladimir Putin Saturday, who warned that Ukraine had “opened Pandora’s box” by attacking civilian economic infrastructure, and promised that Russia would retaliate against Kyiv’s most sensitive economic sectors. In a tit-for-tat pattern of escalation, Russian forces have repeatedly targeted Ukrainian logistics infrastructure in recent weeks, including warehouses and cargo terminals. Early Monday, Ukrainian officials reported that Russian overnight strikes hit food storage and energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa region, leaving five people injured.
Following the attacks, Ozon shares dropped as much as 12% on the Moscow Exchange during Monday morning trading, while shares in AFK Sistema, Ozon’s largest private equity shareholder, fell nearly 13%. When asked whether the Russian government would extend financial support to the company, Kremlin spokespeople stated that officials are working with business representatives to develop multiple support options for the challenging situation.
Founded in 1998, Ozon was one of Russia’s first online retail platforms, and now ranks second only to Wildberries in national market share. Together, the two platforms—often dubbed “Russia’s Amazons”—are used by an estimated 85% to 90% of Russia’s working-age population. Unlike Amazon, which combines direct retail sales with third-party marketplace operations, both Ozon and Wildberries operate almost exclusively as marketplaces: they connect independent sellers to buyers across Russia, handle storage, delivery and payment processing for third-party goods. This structure means that most of the financial losses from destroyed inventory fall on small and medium independent businesses, rather than the platforms themselves.
For many remote Russian regions with limited access to traditional brick-and-mortar retail, residents rely heavily on the two e-commerce giants for clothing, household appliances and daily necessities. The targeting of their widely distributed logistics network has brought the impact of the war directly home to ordinary Russian civilians, far from the front lines of the invasion Russia launched in February 2022. Both Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly denied that they deliberately target civilian infrastructure and civilian populations.