Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russia’s e-commerce industry is expanding from Wildberries to Ozon as Kyiv seeks to inflict fresh pain on President Vladimir Putin‘s wartime economy.
Ukraine has targeted Russian logistics infrastructure belonging to major online retailers, such as Amazon-style retail giant Wildberries, as part of a push to disrupt commercial supply chains and increase the financial burden facing banks and businesses.
Ozon, Russia’s second-largest online retailer, is now next in Ukraine’s crosshairs. Shares of the company plunged nearly 30% on the Moscow Exchange on Monday after it reported drone strikes in southern Russia, which brought the number of facilities targeted in the last three days to six.
Attacks have been reported at logistics hubs in Makhachkala in Dagestan and the town of Enem on the outskirts of Krasnodar in recent days, while work was halted at an Ozon logistics center in the Samara region on Saturday after it was hit by a drone strike.
Ozon said via Telegram that the attack in the Samara region caused a fire in the warehouse and it evacuated more than 500 employees “within minutes.”
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Monday that it had observed evidence of Ukrainian forces intensifying their efforts against Ozon warehouses since Saturday, pivoting from heavy attacks against Wildberries logistics centers since mid-July.
“Systematic strikes on storage centers holding dual-use goods are disrupting the enemy’s logistics and negatively impacting Russia’s economy as a whole,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said via social media on Saturday.
“After Ukrainian units hit 15 of Wildberries’ largest logistics hubs, it’s now Ozon’s turn,” the ministry said.
Putin accuses Ukraine of opening ‘Pandora’s box’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously sought to justify attacks on Wildberries warehouses by saying the hubs targeted were involved in providing Russian forces with drone components, navigation equipment and other military components.
Russia’s Putin, meanwhile, said in comments published over the weekend that Ukraine has opened “Pandora’s box” with its strikes on Russian economic targets, pledging to hit back at Kyiv’s “most sensitive economic sectors.”
Founded in 1998, Ozon has grown into a major player in Russia’s e-commerce sector.
The combined revenue of the three market leaders — Wildberries, Ozon and Yandex Market — reached approximately $140.3 billion by the end of last year, according to the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a Kyiv-based think tank, citing data from Russia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry. That’s equivalent to more than 5% of Russia’s gross domestic product.
Russia has broadly defied economic expectations through four-and-a-half years of full-scale war with Ukraine, although analysts have suggested that cracks in Putin’s wartime economy are becoming harder to hide.
The Kremlin’s heavy reliance on military spending, higher taxes and subsidized bank lending have all been cited as areas of concern.
Source: CNBC