Three months after Ukrainian drone strikes began targeting Russian logistics infrastructure, warehouse insurance rates have surged up to 37.5 times, while the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs proposes a tax deduction to help companies fund their own air defense systems.
Surging Insurance Costs and Billion-Rouble Marketplace Losses
The campaign of long-range strikes launched by Ukraine in mid-July has severely disrupted operations for Russia’s dominant e-commerce platforms, Wildberries and Ozon. Market participants speaking to Vedomosti reported that Renaissance Insurance increased the cost of a policy for a Class A dry warehouse by 37.5 times between June and September, moving from 0.08–0.15% to 3–5% of the insured sum.
Wildberries starting from August 7 will offer a new insurance to sellers which is to protect from damage from what they call terrorist attacks and will include drone strikes. The maximum insured amount will be 50 000 rubles or 532 euros and the premium will be 1,96-5,6%. pic.twitter.com/2BEeW1ZDT0
Broker Mains estimated that insuring a facility holding ten billion roubles in inventory now costs up to 500 million roubles, compared to just 20 to 25 million roubles a year prior. These financial strains coincide with massive physical damage.
Three months have passed since the first Ukrainian drone attack struck Wildberries warehouses on July 18, when drones hit logistics centers in Elektrostal, outside Moscow, and Kotovsk in the Tambov region. During the July 18 attack on the Elektrostal warehouse, security guards kept workers inside the buildings. Following three consecutive days of drone strikes on Ozon facilities across multiple Russian regions in late August, an Ozon warehouse was targeted by Ukraine for the very first time, causing the company’s shares to tumble 12.7% to 2,600 roubles on the Moscow Exchange.
Industrial Vulnerabilities and Soviet-Era Infrastructure
The difficulty of securing these sprawling assets stems directly from their architectural heritage. Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, acknowledged that Russia cannot provide comprehensive air defense coverage for its vast industrial infrastructure because many complexes were designed during the Soviet era with potential nuclear conflict in mind. Production facilities and workshops were deliberately spaced far apart across several kilometers to reduce the risk of total destruction from a single atomic strike. Soviet designers intentionally separated individual workshops to increase the likelihood that manufacturing could survive a nuclear assault, although these spread-out complexes currently pose a significant hurdle for contemporary protection efforts, as observed by Shokhin.
While that dispersion served its original purpose, it has created profound vulnerabilities in modern warfare against long-range drones. Defending individual production buildings across massive industrial sites fails to guarantee the security of the wider complex. Beyond e-commerce warehouses, the strikes have hit metallurgical plants, chemical factories, and energy infrastructure, including five oil refineries that suspended processing operations in September following fires and damage. On October 18, a Ukrainian drone strike sparked a fire at the Petersburg Oil Terminal, while separate raids hit a VKontakte data center and nearby electrical grids in the Leningrad region, following an earlier incident that completely knocked out operations at a Yandex data center located in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast.
Proposed Investment Tax Deductions and Private Defense Spending
To address the protection gap, Russian businesses are preparing to invest private resources into defensive technologies. Alexander Shokhin suggested launching a pilot program based on an investment tax deduction mechanism to encourage companies to channel resources into air defense projects.
Ready to chip in, so to speak. And, probably, the question is that this process needs to be stimulated. Here’s a pilot for an investment tax deduction, let’s at least start with that. This is a serious investment. Let’s not be afraid that in wartime it is necessary to stimulate companies’ investments in this sphere, in the sphere of protecting production facilities from attacks.
Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs
To encourage these measures, the Russian Finance Ministry proposed tax breaks for companies spending on facility defense and restoration. Following a series of attacks on its logistics centers, Wildberries even announced a tender for the supply of 478,000 square meters of galvanized metal mesh for the eight Russian regions where it maintains logistics hubs.
Decree Penalties and Regional Supply Strain
President Vladimir Putin on August 24 issued a decree establishing penalties for businesses over the potential neglect or delayed implementation of security protocols at critical infrastructure sites, thereby intensifying regulatory oversight for enterprise owners. In August, Vladimir Putin also instructed the Russian government to adopt a programme to rebuild logistics and warehouse facilities damaged by Ukrainian strikes, which he described as terrorist attacks.
The consequences of the infrastructure strikes extend beyond Russia’s borders into neighboring allied states. In August 2026, Tajikistan’s Energy Minister estimated a remaining two-month supply of petroleum due to decreased access to Russian petroleum as Ukrainian strikes strain Russian supplies. Because Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has gradually ratcheted up diplomatic pressure on Putin—albeit in moderate language—to halt the conflict, Astana has pivoted westward toward Azerbaijan to route crude oil through a trans-Caspian pathway and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, though maritime transport via tankers limits logistical capacity upon arrival in Baku.
