Ukrainian military drones struck an Ozon logistics center in the Russian city of Orenburg overnight on August 23, marking the second consecutive night of attacks on Russia’s second-largest online marketplace and its main competitor to Wildberries.
The attack hit an Ozon fulfillment center in Orenburg, a city in southwestern Russia near the Kazakhstan border, approximately 1,000 kilometers from the Ukrainian frontier. Photos and videos posted to Telegram channels showed smoke rising from the warehouse following the reported strike, with air raid alerts active in the region ahead of the attack. Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry has not yet commented on the damage.
Two Nights of Strikes on Ozon
The Orenburg attack followed an earlier strike just 24 hours earlier on August 22, when Ukrainian drones hit an Ozon logistics hub in Chapayevsk, Samara Oblast. That facility is one of Ozon’s largest fulfillment centers in the Volga region. After the first strike, Ozon suspended operations at the Chapayevsk hub and began redirecting deliveries and orders through other facilities, according to Euromaidan Press.
Separately, a massive fire erupted overnight on August 22 at a warehouse in St. Petersburg’s Kolpino district, spreading to engulf at least 82,000 square meters near an Ozon logistics center. The cause was not immediately clear, and air raid alerts had not been declared in the Leningrad Oblast.
Shifting From Wildberries to Ozon
The attacks signal a strategic shift in Ukraine’s targeting. After months of strikes on Wildberries facilities, Ukraine’s military has now turned its attention to Ozon sites across Russia. The Defense Ministry justified the targeting by citing Ozon’s role in supplying goods to the Russian military.
“Systematic strikes on storage centers for dual-use goods are making it more difficult for the enemy to operate and are negatively impacting the overall economy of Russia,” the ministry said after the August 22 attack on Chapayevsk. Ozon, which employs more than 50,000 people and processes millions of orders daily, has become a critical piece of Russia’s domestic logistics network.
The strikes on Ozon come alongside continued Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure. Overnight on August 22, Ukrainian forces also struck fuel tanks at the Yeysk oil terminal in Krasnodar Krai, which supplies the Russian armed forces, and hit the Novokuybyshevsk refinery in Samara Oblast with FP-1 drones, according to RBC-Ukraine. Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed the Yeysk and Novokuybyshevsk strikes.
Russia’s total combat losses since February 2022 now stand at nearly 1,476,580 personnel, with 1,310 killed in the past 24 hours alone and 1,925 operational-tactical drones destroyed, according to the Ukrainian General Staff. The daily drone loss figure represents a significant spike and suggests intensified Ukrainian air operations across Russian territory.
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