Drone Strikes Extend to Civilian Warehouses: 'Absolute Nightmare' for Russian E-commerce Workers

According to an October 8 report by The New York Times, Ukraine has continued to strike targets inside Russia with drones, and the massive warehouses of e-commerce companies are now also within the scope of attacks. The warehouse facilities of Wildberries and Ozon—Russia's two largest e-commerce platforms—have become targets of repeated strikes.

The New York Times, headlined 'Absolute Nightmare,' documented the conditions inside these warehouses: late-night emergency evacuations and persistent fear of death are no longer isolated incidents, but have become the new reality for these workers. The report noted that such Russian e-commerce companies have been repeatedly targeted, with workers living long-term under a cycle of alarms and evacuations.

In July of this year, a warehouse of a Russian e-commerce company near St. Petersburg was damaged in a drone strike. The warehousing networks of Wildberries and Ozon span multiple locations across Russia, employing large numbers of laborers engaged in sorting, packing, and handling. These individuals are far from what is traditionally considered the military front line, yet must evacuate their posts amid late-night alarms, facing attacks that may arrive at any moment.

When drones can easily reach a civilian commercial warehouse, the boundary between the so-called 'rear' and the 'front line' has become blurred in the daily lives of these workers. War has expanded the scope of strikes from military targets to the workplaces of civilian laborers, with the cost extracted from those who hold no decision-making power.