Ukraine widens strikes on Russian e-commerce giants as Ozon warehouses burn

Ukraine has escalated its campaign against Russia's e-commerce infrastructure, striking four more warehouses belonging to Ozon, Russia's second-largest online retailer, after already crippling facilities of its larger rival Wildberries. Ozon's shares dropped nearly 30% on Monday after the company reported that six of its facilities had come under attack within three days.

A logistics hub in Makhachkala, Dagestan, caught fire and halted operations after a drone strike injured several people. Another warehouse burned in Enem near Krasnodar, while staff were evacuated from sites in Adygeysk and Nevinnomyssk. Earlier strikes had already disrupted Ozon logistics centres in the Samara and Orenburg regions.

Analysts note that unlike Wildberries, which is backed by state-owned bank VTB, Ozon's main shareholder AFK Sistema carries heavy debt and is unlikely to offer meaningful support. Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised state assistance to rebuild damaged warehouses and ordered the government to draft a support programme for the sector. The EU sanctioned the financial arms of both Ozon and Wildberries on 24 July. Putin has also created legal powers allowing the state to seize companies, including in e-commerce, fuel and transport, deemed insufficiently protected from Ukrainian attacks.

Other strikes

Ukraine's drone forces commander, Robert Brovdi, said Ukrainian forces hit a Russian Mig-29 fighter jet and two vessels, a tanker and a bulk carrier, in the Black Sea — the third Russian warplane hit in two days. Ukraine's military also struck a military plant producing solid rocket fuel in Kamensky, in Russia's Rostov region.

Russia's Perm oil refinery, the country's seventh-largest, has shut down following a drone strike on 21 August, with its main processing unit, accounting for nearly 40% of capacity, expected to need one to two weeks for repairs.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, chairing a meeting of the "coalition of the willing" in Kyiv on Ukraine's independence day, urged allies to dig into their own missile stocks to supply more Patriot interceptors. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ten Ukrainian prisoners of war previously listed as missing had been released in an exchange conducted via Belarus.