Nov 4 (Reuters) – A Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at a logistics hub belonging to Russian e-commerce group Ozon in southern Russia, the company and a regional official said on Wednesday.
It was the second time that Ozon’s facility in the town of Adygeysk had been targeted – part of a wider campaign in which Ukraine has hit dozens of huge warehouses operated by the company and its rival Wildberries since July in order to disrupt Russia’s economy and war effort.
Russia has mounted similar attacks on Ukrainian commercial sites, in an air war that both sides have escalated in recent months while battle lines on the ground remain largely static.
Ahead of US-mediated peace talks in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11, Russia carried out waves of bombing of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Tuesday, and Ukraine struck an oil refinery in Yaroslavl on Monday night.
Regional head Murat Kempilov said firefighters were deployed to tackle the blaze at Adygeysk. He added that debris from “enemy drones” had fallen and caused damage, but no casualties, in two nearby villages. There was no comment from Ukraine.
Prior to the attack, Ozon said in a financial results release last week that it expected to lose 30.1 billion roubles ($367 million) from drone attacks across 11 sites.
The company said it was not aware of any casualties from the latest strike, and all staff were evacuated from the site.
The company will cancel any orders that it can’t fulfil from other facilities, and is temporarily not accepting deliveries from sellers at the logistics centre, it added.
The e-retailer’s share price was trading slightly lower on Wednesday, down a marginal 0.4% on the day at 3,781 roubles per share at 1104 GMT, according to the Moscow exchange.
($1 = 81.9200 roubles)
(Reporting by Jekaterīna Golubkova in Tokyo and Robert Harvey in London; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
