Inside the Russian Warehouses Bombarded by Ukraine
Middle-of-the-night evacuations and fears about death have become the norm for workers at Russian e-commerce companies targeted by Ukraine.
A warehouse for a Russian e-commerce company near St. Petersburg after it was hit by Ukrainian drones in July.Agence France-Presse — Getty Image
The Ozon logo in downtown Moscow in August. The toll of the Ukrainian attacks on Russian warehouses pales in comparison to the civilian suffering that Russia is causing in Ukraine.
By Paul Sonne, Anastasia Kuts and Milana Mazaeva
Reporting from Berlin
Oct. 8, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ET
It was two days before the start of school, and David Zelensky, 16, was earning some final summer cash at an e-commerce warehouse in the Russian city of Belgorod.
The oldest of nine children, David had landed the job a few weeks earlier at the online retailer Ozon, an upgrade from his former gig delivering food. He settled in for an evening shift on Aug. 30 that would put him closer to his dream of buying a motorcycle.
Then came the Ukrainian missiles.
First, the city air raid sirens wailed. Next, an explosion from what seemed to be the interception of a rocket rang out.
As workers ran across the warehouse floor toward a shelter, a missile slammed into the building. The lights went dark. Walls and metal shelves crashed down on a group of high school and college students as a fireball engulfed part of the facility.
David, who communicated with fellow workers by writing on a phone because he was deaf and unable to speak, was killed. A 21-year-old college student also died, and a 16-year-old boy was critically injured.
David Zelensky [JB -- related? :)]. The Russian regional sports ministry said he had shown great promise as a player on his basketball team.Sofia Zelenskaya
“It was hard to process the fact that, just moments ago, I had seen people alive and well, and then suddenly they were gone,” said another student who was injured at the warehouse.
The student was one of more than a dozen e-commerce workers interviewed by The New York Times from warehouses across Russia. They described how incoming drones, hourslong middle-of-the-night evacuations and fears of injury or death had become the new norm at work.
Some of the workers spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of being fired. In other cases, The Times is withholding their identity for security reasons.
The events in Belgorod illustrate the danger that civilian employees at Russia’s two e-commerce giants, Ozon and Wildberries, are facing as Ukraine has transformed the companies into a new front in the war.
For years, Moscow’s invasion has forced Ukrainians to make life-or-death decisions every day. Now, more Russians are having to do the same, as Kyiv’s missiles and drones shatter the illusion of normalcy carefully conjured by President Vladimir V. Putin.
“Personally, to be honest, I can’t believe it,” said a 19-year-old employee at a Wildberries warehouse outside Moscow.
The employee encountered his first drone strike at the facility last month. “It’s an absolute nightmare,” he said.
Ukraine has argued that the warehouses are legitimate targets because the retailers sell components that can be used to fix Russian military drones and protective equipment for Russian soldiers.
Russian officials and the head of Wildberries, Tatyana Kim, have dismissed the rationale, calling the strikes “terrorist attacks” against civilians. Wildberries and Ozon did not respond to requests for comment.
JB: The below underlining-emphasis of lines of the article [***] are mine
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The toll of the Ukrainian attacks on Russian warehouses is vastly exceeded by the civilian suffering that Russia is causing in Ukraine.
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Two months of frequent strikes on Wildberries and Ozon facilities killed 12 people and injured 135 through Sept. 11, according to the Conflict Intelligence Team, an open-source research group tracking wartime civilian casualties.
By comparison, Russia killed more Ukrainians in a single attack on a shopping mall in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Aug. 21. In that strike, 16 people died and another 136 were injured, according to the research group. Moscow has also attacked large numbers of Ukrainian warehouses.
Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Broadly, the Conflict Intelligence Team figures show that 66 percent of reported civilian deaths in the war this year have taken place in Ukraine, compared with 19 percent in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine and 15 percent in Russia itself.
Still, for many employees at the Russian warehouses, the regular threat of attack has come as a shock.
At a Wildberries warehouse near Domodedovo Airport in the Moscow region, workers ran out of the facility one morning at 3 a.m. as drones descended on the area. They took cover under the bridge of a nearby highway, waiting four hours until after the sun came up to return, one worker recalled.
Outside Moscow, at a Wildberries warehouse in Novoselki, workers repeatedly flee into the woods during evacuations. They wonder whether they will freeze this coming winter when they have to drop everything and leave on cold days.
A worker at that warehouse recalled taking a cigarette break on a recent day and watching as a Ukrainian drone exploded in the parking lot 50 yards away, without any siren or alarm going off.
“When one actually lands right next to you — when you can even hear the metal ball bearings raining down from the sky — that’s when the real fear kicks in,” the worker said, noting that some employees now flee calmly, while newer hires run in panic.
A few of the warehouse workers who spoke to The Times decided to quit, citing safety concerns. But the vast majority have stayed on the job, noting that the work pays better and is more flexible than other options.
Wildberries workers say they can show up and leave whenever they want, including in the middle of the night, and work for as many hours as they choose. Workers also receive most of their pay immediately. Some say they can earn as much as $2,900 a month, well over double the average monthly pay in Russia, though earnings vary based on the volume of work.
As a result, many have adapted to the fraught new reality.
One worker at a Wildberries warehouse in Yekaterinburg recalled how even after a drone slammed into the parking lot and burned about 50 cars belonging to employees, workers kept showing up. They simply parked their cars next to the burned-out vehicles.
Another worker who was employed at a Wildberries warehouse in the Tula region described how, after his workplace was blown up, he started traveling two and a half hours a day to work at a different Wildberries warehouse, in the Moscow region. He said he faced hostility there from people worried that the influx of labor would reduce wages and work.
In recent weeks, the Russian authorities have pressed companies to erect defenses, with nets and scaffolding going up around installations to blunt the impact of drone attacks.
A satellite image showing an Ozon warehouse in Enem, Russia, on Aug. 24 after a strike.Vantor, via Reuters
In Yekaterinburg, the Wildberries warehouse put water barrels on the roof to suppress fires, erected nets and fencing, and installed an exhaust system to clear smoke rapidly, the worker there said.
On the evening of the attack at the Ozon warehouse in Belgorod, where David worked, supervisors gathered the staff for a five-minute safety briefing.
David had a shift from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the placement station, where workers load incoming packages into bins for sorting, according to another worker who saw him that day.
What exactly transpired in David’s final minutes is unclear.
While he most likely could not have heard the siren go off or the initial blast from the intercepted missile, he could have received other alerts. Hand-held inventory scanners used by workers would flash warnings during attacks, sometimes with a delay, one worker said. David may also have been warned by others or may have seen co-workers running.
Regardless, there was very little time.
In drone attacks, people often have time to take cover. But missiles arrive quickly, and one worker said that no one had expected the Ukrainians to use missiles on the comparatively small Ozon warehouse.
Ozon has since barred minors from working at its warehouses in some regions, according to Russian news outlets. The company also offered compensation to the Belgorod workers, with higher sums for those with more serious injuries, employees said.
Not long after the strike, David’s family gathered for a funeral.
His father, also born deaf and nonspeaking, and his mother, born with a hearing impairment, were there, his aunt, Anna Polushkina, told The Times. So were four of his eight siblings, all of whom are also either deaf or hearing-impaired, she said. While the family shared the same surname as President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, there was no indication that they were related, Ms. Polushkina said.
At the funeral, the attendees hugged and cried. His friends placed a small motorcycle atop a display of roses and carnations at the grave. There were wafer cakes, a nod to his love of sweets.
David’s school, a special educational institution for children with disabilities, put out a statement calling his death an irreparable loss. The regional sports ministry said that he had shown great promise as a player on a basketball team for the hearing impaired.
“He dreamed about a motorcycle,” Ms. Polushkina said. “He really loved to ride.”
“As for an attack,” she said, “we never imagined anything like this.”
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Alina Lobzina contributed reporting.
Paul Sonne is the Moscow bureau chief, leading coverage of Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. He is based in Berlin.
Milana Mazaeva is a reporter and researcher, helping to cover Russian society.
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