Russia’s New Economic Target: How Strikes on Western Supply Chains in Ukraine Hit European Markets

A Coca-Cola plant outside Kyiv. A Bunge sunflower-oil facility in Dnipro. A British American Tobacco factory in Pryluky. A Stellantis spare-parts warehouse in Kyiv. Logistics facilities carrying products for Puma, Bosch, Liqui Moly, Toyota and the Dutch Raben Group.

Over the past several weeks, Russian strikes have repeatedly hit facilities belonging to, or directly serving, major international companies operating in Ukraine.

The list is striking not only because of the brands involved, but because of the type of infrastructure being destroyed. These are factories, warehouses, distribution centres and logistics hubs: the physical nodes that connect production to consumers.

The attacks are therefore creating a problem that goes well beyond the value of individual buildings or inventories. They are disrupting the supply chains through which foreign companies reach the Ukrainian market and through which Ukrainian producers reach European and global markets.

For European businesses in particular, this is becoming difficult to treat as a purely Ukrainian problem.

A growing list of foreign companies under fire

The pattern has become particularly visible since August.

On September 3, Russian Shahed-type drones struck and damaged a Coca-Cola production facility in Velyka Dymerka, in Kyiv region. There were no reported casualties, but the attack drew an unusually direct political response.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russians could not have been unaware that they were striking an American facility and described the attack as a signal to the United States. The American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine confirmed that employees were unharmed and that the company was assessing the damage.

The Coca-Cola case was followed by another attack on an American-owned food producer.

On September 10, a Russian strike hit a sunflower-oil facility operated by Bunge in Dnipro. Two people were killed. Reuters described the facility as one of Ukraine's five largest food plants, with a processing capacity of about 1,600 tonnes of oilseeds per day.

The plant produces oil sold under the Oleina brand, making it part of a supply chain that reaches directly into Ukraine's food market.

Dnipro mayor and public figure Borys Filatov made the ownership issue explicit after the attack. He stressed that residents knew the facility as Oleina, that it had already been attacked several times, and that Bunge owned it and was American-owned. Filatov also pointed out that US Senator Richard Blumenthal had recently visited the facility. His criticism was aimed at the way the attack was being communicated: rather than describing it simply as damage to an unnamed “food industry enterprise”, he argued that Ukraine should publicly emphasise that an American company's property had been hit and involve the Foreign Ministry.

That distinction matters.

A damaged Ukrainian factory is one thing. A repeated strike on the facility of a major American multinational, shortly after a senior US senator visited it, sends a different political and economic message.

And Bunge is not an isolated case.

On September 7, British American Tobacco confirmed that its cigarette manufacturing facility in Pryluky, Chernihiv region, had been damaged by a Russian drone attack. The plant is one of BAT's major production assets in Ukraine.

Two days earlier, on September 5, a Russian attack drone hit Stellantis Ukraine's central spare-parts warehouse in Kyiv, seriously damaging the facility. Stellantis is a multinational automotive group headquartered in the Netherlands and built around a portfolio of major European and American brands, including Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat and Opel.

On August 30, an Auchan warehouse in Boryspil, near Kyiv, was damaged by attack drones.

On August 29, a PepsiCo production complex in Mykolaiv region was damaged in a Russian drone attack. The facility produces products including Pepsi, Lipton Ice Tea and Sandora.

Then there was the August 5 attack, which showed why logistics infrastructure may be an even more consequential target than an individual factory.

A single large Russian missile-and-drone attack destroyed or severely damaged several logistics facilities associated with international companies.

Puma's Ukrainian logistics complex was destroyed, with the company's losses estimated at more than €12mn. A warehouse holding Liqui Moly products was destroyed. A Toyota Ukraine spare-parts warehouse was hit. A Bosch logistics warehouse was also destroyed.

The Dutch Raben Group's logistics facility in Brovary was badly damaged in the same attack. Crucially, Raben's warehouse was not necessarily carrying only Raben's own products. Logistics providers such as Raben are infrastructure for other international companies as well.

That makes the economic effect multiplicative.

A missile does not need to hit five companies separately if all five depend on the same warehouse.

\## Why warehouses matter more than they appear

This is where the recent attacks begin to look less like a random collection of industrial strikes and more like a campaign against economic infrastructure.

Ukraine's food system illustrates the mechanism particularly clearly.

Olha Trofimtseva, coordinator of the agriculture and biodiversity sector at the Ukraine Facility Platform, argues that the country is not facing a systemic food shortage. The food itself has not suddenly disappeared. What has been disrupted is the infrastructure needed to move it from producers and importers to supermarkets and restaurants.

Large distribution centres are particularly important because they concentrate huge volumes of goods and allow retailers to supply many locations from a relatively small number of highly automated facilities.

They are also highly vulnerable.

When one is destroyed, the problem is not limited to the building. Companies have to find replacement storage, redirect trucks, reorganise delivery schedules and establish new routes. Products requiring refrigeration or other special handling are particularly difficult to reroute.

That helps explain why consumers can see shortages even when there is no shortage of food at the national level.

A product can exist in Ukraine but still fail to reach a supermarket shelf.

And this is where the distinction between direct and indirect damage becomes important. Russia does not have to hit every supermarket. It can hit the warehouse supplying the supermarket. It does not have to hit every McDonald's restaurant. It can disrupt the logistics network supplying McDonald's.

McDonald's shows how the disruption reaches consumers

McDonald's is an unusually useful example because the company sits at the visible end of a much larger supply chain. The restaurant itself is only the final link. Behind it are food producers, refrigerated storage, distribution centres, transport operators and regional logistics routes.

Recent disruptions have already affected McDonald's Ukraine. The company has reported temporary unavailability of some menu items as air-raid alerts and attacks disrupt deliveries and make it harder for logistics partners to maintain normal supply schedules.

The broader pattern is visible across Kyiv's retail sector. Recent Russian attacks on warehouses and logistics hubs have contributed to shortages of some products, disrupted deliveries and pushed businesses towards more expensive and decentralised supply models.

Trofimtseva says retailers are already trying to reduce dependence on giant central warehouses by moving towards smaller facilities, regional storage and more direct deliveries.

That is an important structural change. Before the war, centralisation was an advantage. One large distribution centre could serve an entire region more cheaply than several smaller facilities. Under sustained missile and drone attacks, the same concentration becomes a vulnerability.

The price of resilience

The emerging response is therefore to build redundancy into the system. Companies are spreading inventories across several locations, reducing the amount of stock held in a single warehouse and looking for alternative transport routes.

But resilience is more expensive than efficiency.

Trofimtseva expects the disruption to put upward pressure on consumer prices, particularly for products requiring refrigeration and more complex logistics. Shelf-stable goods are less vulnerable, while cold-chain products face greater risks and higher costs. The result may not necessarily be a complete shortage of a product category. Instead, consumers may simply see less choice.

A retailer that previously stocked 25 types of yoghurt may decide that maintaining ten is more realistic when every additional product requires storage, transportation and replenishment across a damaged logistics network.

That is an economic effect of war that is easy to underestimate because it does not necessarily produce dramatic empty shelves.

The system becomes less diverse, more expensive and less efficient. Trofimtseva estimates that warehouse capacity equivalent to dozens of football fields has been destroyed since the latest wave of attacks began intensifying in mid-to-late July.

The destruction therefore has a cumulative effect. Every new warehouse attack does not simply add another building to the list. It reduces the number of alternative routes available to the companies that remain.

Europe is inside the same economic geography

The foreign companies affected by the strikes come from several countries. Germany is represented by Puma, Bosch and Liqui Moly. France by Auchan.

The United Kingdom by British American Tobacco. The Netherlands by Raben and, through Stellantis' corporate structure, one of the world's largest automotive groups. The United States is represented by Bunge, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola.

Japan is represented by Toyota. There is not enough evidence to conclude that Russia is systematically prioritising European companies over American or Japanese ones. The sample is too small, and several companies were affected by the same mass attacks.

But the cases reveal something important about the European economy. European companies are deeply embedded in Ukraine's physical infrastructure.

A German manufacturer's warehouse, a French retailer's distribution centre and a Dutch logistics company's facility all depend on the same roads, railways, electricity networks, border crossings and ports as Ukrainian companies.

The nationality of the company does not change the vulnerability of the infrastructure. Once Russia targets that infrastructure, it is effectively hitting the international businesses operating through it.

The battlefield extends to the border

The same logic can be seen beyond factories and warehouses.

Ukraine's ports have become a critical part of the economic battle because they connect Ukrainian production to international markets.

Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukrainian port infrastructure on the Black Sea and Danube, including facilities used to export agricultural products.

This matters because Ukraine's agricultural economy remains heavily dependent on maritime transport. When ports are damaged or vessels face greater risks, exporters have to divert cargo through alternative routes that are slower and more expensive. The pressure is then transferred to roads, railways, and border crossings.

On September 9, a Russian drone attack hit the Starokozache – Tudora crossing between Ukraine and Moldova, killing two civilians and injuring three. Traffic was halted at the crossing.

The following day, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Poland expected Russia could also seek to target crossings between Ukraine and Poland and said a threat to one such crossing had already been thwarted. That turns border infrastructure into another part of the same story. A factory can produce goods. A warehouse can store them. A truck can carry them. But if the border crossing is blocked, the supply chain still stops.

The port problem is even bigger for Ukraine's global trade

The pressure on maritime logistics is particularly significant for agriculture.

Ukraine's Black Sea ports remain essential for exporting grain, vegetable oils and other agricultural commodities. Attacks on port infrastructure therefore affect not only Ukrainian farmers and exporters but also international buyers and food companies that depend on Ukrainian commodities.

The system has alternative routes through the Danube and across the EU, but those routes cannot simply absorb unlimited volumes overnight.

That creates a chain reaction: more cargo moves by road or rail, border queues grow, transport becomes more expensive, exporters face delays, and the final price rises.

For foreign companies operating in Ukraine, the problem is therefore no longer simply the physical safety of their Ukrainian assets. It is the reliability of the entire commercial environment.

Ukraine is being forced to redesign its business model

The long-term consequence may be the most important one.

The Ukrainian economy was built, like most modern economies, around concentration and efficiency. Large warehouses reduced costs. Centralised distribution simplified logistics. Ports allowed huge volumes of agricultural products to move efficiently into global markets.

War changes the calculation. A central warehouse is efficient until it is destroyed. A single export corridor is cheap until it is blocked.

A highly concentrated supply chain is profitable until one missile can cut several companies out of the market at once.

Businesses are therefore moving towards decentralisation, regional storage, alternative routes and closer integration with European logistics networks.

Trofimtseva describes this as a broader shift away from the old “economy of scale” towards an economy built around resilience. Companies are diversifying risks, decentralising capacity, changing production structures and looking for European markets and partnerships that can keep them operating under prolonged uncertainty.\ That transformation has a cost.

It requires more warehouses instead of one, more routes instead of one corridor, more inventory buffers and more expensive transport.

But it also makes the system harder to cripple with a single strike. And that is ultimately why the attacks on foreign companies matter. Russia is not simply destroying individual businesses in Ukraine.

It is attacking the infrastructure that makes international business possible: factories, warehouses, distribution centres, ports and border crossings.