The workers streaming out of the warehouse in Zelenodolsk, a shipbuilding town on the Volga River in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan, looked panic-stricken as they glanced back over their shoulders and hurried into the parking lot. Mobile phone footage from the July 31 drone attack showed a plume of white smoke rising near the fulfillment center run by Ozon, Russia’s second-largest online retailer. Somewhere beyond the warehouse, a drone struck the ground with a dull explosion. The workers watched for a moment. Then they went back inside. Before lunch, the conveyor belts were moving again.
Nobody was hurt, and Ozon said the evacuation took only a few minutes and the logistics center escaped damage. In the brutal math of Ukraine’s drone campaign, that counts as a good day. Since July 18, Ukrainian drones have hit more than a dozen sites across Russia’s network of online retail hubs, killing at least nine warehouse workers and wounding scores more. The drones have reached as far east as Yekaterinburg, roughly 1,000 miles from Ukraine. That warehouse survived unscathed and operations resumed hours later, but the disruptions to business operations caused by the drones are still costly.
This is the price of business as usual in Russia’s wartime economy. The immediate costs for Ozon and its larger competitor, Wildberries, which together handle about three-quarters of Russia’s online retail, are easy to see: shuttered warehouses, suspended operations, delayed deliveries and damaged inventory. The more pressing question is what comes next.