Russians are buying their war gear on Ozon. Users of Russia's second-largest online marketplace ordered about $300 million in dual-use and military goods between August 2025 and July 2026, according to internal company data examined by the independent outlet Verstka.

Ukraine is now burning those warehouses down. Its forces struck three Ozon logistics centers covering 314,000 square meters on 24 August, part of a campaign that hit at least four Ozon hubs across southern Russia over several days, Militarnyi reports.

Body armor led the spending

The biggest class by money was tactical gear, six categories covering body armor, helmets, load-bearing vests and belts, armor plates and adapters, and neck and shoulder protection. Users ordered more than 527,000 such items for about $110 million.

Body armor was the single most-ordered product in the class. Almost 157,700 vests were sold for roughly $61 million, at an average of about $388 each.

Optics were the costliest goods

Military optics ranked second by spending and carried the highest prices. Buyers ordered almost 350,000 scopes, night-vision devices, and thermal imagers for about $87 million.

The average thermal sight went for about $1,680, with more than 28,000 ordered. Plain optical scopes were the most common, with over 110,000 orders, followed by almost 99,000 collimator sights.

Drone parts made up the rest

Users also spent about $75 million on drones and drone components. Half of that, roughly $36 million, went to a single category labeled accessories for drones and quadcopters.

That category alone drew 554,000 orders. It consists mostly of the parts to assemble a copter from scratch: frames, propellers, receivers, and cameras.

The first Ukrainian strikes on Ozon started on 22 August. Ozon and Wildberries—Russia’s two largest online marketplaces—and their smaller rivals collectively sell goods and services worth the equivalent of 8.5% of Russia’s GDP and employ 4 million people.

Ukrainian drones struck the Wildberries logistics hub in the Russian town of Kotovsk for the second time in six weeks, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported. A fire took hold across most of the 108,000-square-meter complex, and by late morning, the regional governor said the warehouse was destroyed. Wildberries, Russia's biggest online store, had restarted the site after a July strike. The facility is located in Tambov Oblast, about 420 km from the war zone in Ukraine.

The second fire at the same hub

Exilenova+ reported the strike at 01:24, saying Ukraine's Defense Forces had hit the site again and that a fire was burning. Later, the channel continued to share photos and videos from Kotovsk. The Russian news Telegram channel Astra reported that local residents described the warehouse as attacked and alight. Witnesses counted at least 10 explosions in 40 minutes. Wildberries said a drone attack damaged its logistics facility in the oblast and started a fire, and that the site had stopped accepting new deliveries.

What the governor said, and what changed by morning

Tambov Oblast governor Yevgeny Pervyshov confirmed the attack and put the burning area at more than 100,000 square meters. He claimed air defenses and mobile fire groups of a regional volunteer reserve unit destroyed 16 drones. He initially reported one Wildberries employee hurt, with concussion from a blast wave, and said a downed Ukrainian drone set a house on fire in a dacha settlement.

By 11:17, Pervyshov's account had changed. Fire had destroyed the warehouse completely, and two people were injured, he said. Three strike drones had reached the building, the official stated. He closed by again urging men in the oblast to join the defense of its skies. Earlier, Kotovsk's mayor asked residents not to leave their homes for two days, citing the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning from the burning warehouse.

Russia's Defense Ministry separately claimed it destroyed 426 drones overnight across the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces hit 16 targets in Russia over the past day, naming oil facilities — "the Russian oil wallet that finances the war" — along with airfields, a missile unit, a military plant, and Russian logistics. War has to return to where it came from, he said.

Almost no storage left in central Russia

The Kotovsk hub opened in 2025 as one of Wildberries' key logistics sites for central Russia, built to hold up to 54 million items at full capacity. Drones first hit it overnight on 18 July, when seven warehouse staff died and, by the governor's count, 25 more were hurt. The company suspended operations then, too.

By the end of July, the retailer had already lost more than a million square meters of warehouse space, Exile+ calculated, which leaves it physically almost no free capacity in the center of the country.

From one marketplace to the next

Ukrainian drones destroyed eight Wildberries warehouses in July alone, roughly 860,000 square meters or about 15.4% of the company's storage. The campaign widened to Ozon, Russia's second-largest online store, with its biggest Russian complex hit in Orenburg on 23 August, and three southern hubs struck the next night.

Independent businesses selling through M.Video, Russia’s largest electronics chain, waited months to receive customer payments for goods already sold. One seller received it only after filing a formal demand that usually precedes a lawsuit, according to a Vedomosti report.

The sellers are independent businesses using M.Video’s website as their storefront. Under M.Video’s seller contract, a customer buys from the independent business while M.Video collects the payment as the seller’s agent.

The business pays M.Video a commission for listing the product and handling payment and delivery. Until M.Video transfers the proceeds, the seller has already handed over the product but has not received the money from the sale.

Some sellers turn to legal demands

Sellers said payments for goods sold in May and June were still missing in August. One sent M.Video a formal demand on 13 August, giving the company five days to pay and waiving interest. The money arrived on 18 August.

Another business said its demand went unanswered, while its assigned manager stopped responding. It continued shipping orders until mid-July because M.Video had promised to transfer payment for its May sales.

Similar complaints had already surfaced two months earlier. M.Video told ABN that transfers were regular, but rapid growth sometimes required additional checks before funds could be released. The same report cited a business that had waited 24 working days after approving its sales statement; its previous transfer had also arrived late.

Independent sellers are taking a larger role in M.Video’s business. M.Video’s annual results show that products from these sellers accounted for one in every ten orders in 2025. According to its half-year marketplace update, turnover from these businesses quadrupled year-on-year as M.Video expanded beyond electronics. The number of products listed grew nearly sixfold.

The shift follows heavy losses in M.Video’s store-based business. M.Video’s annual results show that it lost about 64 billion rubles (about $770 million)—nearly one-fifth of its annual revenue. The chain closed hundreds of underperforming stores and opened only 11.

Ukrainian drones struck a logistics complex belonging to Russian online retailer Ozon in Orenburg on 23 August, the second Ozon warehouse hit in two days, monitoring Telegram channels reported. The site sits about 1,200 km from the war zone, near Russia's border with Kazakhstan. Hours earlier, a large fire tore through a separate warehouse outside St. Petersburg, roughly 900 km north of Ukraine, though local authorities declared no drone or missile threat.

Drones hit Russia's biggest Ozon warehouse

Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ published video of the strike moment, after which a fire took hold on the site. Independent Russian outlet Astra analyzed eyewitness footage showing an emergency vehicle racing toward the depot. The complex spans more than 200,000 m² and was designed to hold over 31 million items, ranking among Ozon's biggest in Russia.

The warehouse stands inside the city's special economic zone, a tax-favored industrial park on the eastern edge of European Russia. The first phase opened in August 2024, and a second building followed in 2025.

Orenburg mayor Albert Yumadilov claimed several drones were downed over the special economic zone and that debris fell on the Ozon complex, starting a fire that crews quickly put out with no one hurt. 

Ozon confirmed the strike, saying it evacuated more than 300 workers, pulled its goods from the marketplace and stopped taking new deliveries while the site sat idle. 

A second fire near St. Petersburg, with no air-raid alert

Overnight, a large blaze hit a warehouse in the Kolpino area south of St. Petersburg. Astra established that the warehouse stood about 350 m from an Ozon site, and witnesses said they heard no drones or air defense. Ukrainian Telegram channel Exile+ identified the burning facility as a storage warehouse run by Logistera.

Part of a widening campaign on Russian marketplace logistics

The Orenburg hit followed the first-ever Ozon strike a day earlier, at a warehouse in Chapaevsk, Samara Oblast. Before turning to Ozon, Ukrainian drones had struck more than 10 warehouses belonging to the larger Russian marketplace Wildberries. Such marketplace hubs move not only consumer goods but dual-use items like electronics and drone components that can reach Russia's military.