Blow to the "food chains": how Russia's attacks on logistics add 3–12% to the price of every product in Ukraine

For more than 4.5 years of the full-scale war, Ukrainian retail has demonstrated operational adaptation, yet Russia's massive targeted strikes on logistics infrastructure in the summer of 2026 dealt the industry one of the hardest blows of the entire conflict. The enemy deliberately hit large distribution centers (DCs) in the Kyiv region and in other regions, turning logistics—optimized for years to shave every cent off the checkout total—into a critical risk point. According to information gathered by RBC-Ukraine, the estimated aggregate sum of direct losses for individual market players exceeds 24.7 billion hryvnia (approximately 594.2 million dollars at the average NBU rate for 2025). At the same time, a mass shortage on the shelves was avoided: chains switched to "off-the-truck" operations and forced decentralization, but each such maneuver adds a so-called "war surcharge" of 3% to 12% to the final price of goods.

The scale of destruction: 61 cases and the sectors under attack

RBC-Ukraine's analysis includes 61 specific damage cases, with the ratio of distribution to production being 43:18. The strikes hit the food, non-food, e-commerce, and fuel retail sectors; manufacturers also suffered significant losses. According to the consulting firm Pro-Consulting, the indirect losses to Ukraine's warehousing as a result of the summer shelling amount to nearly 6 billion dollars. Thus, the total economic effect—direct and indirect losses, lost capacity, rerouting of flows, and rising insurance premiums—is measured in tens of billions of hryvnia and affects the entire chain from the factory to the supermarket shelf.

How the war will rewrite the price tag: from cost price to the "war surcharge"

In classical economics, the shelf price is a weighted compromise between cost price, competition, and store maintenance expenses. In wartime conditions, this formula is supplemented by logistics costs along detour routes, capacity reservation, staff security, and post-attack recovery. Arsen Didur, Executive Director of the Union of Dairy Enterprises of Ukraine, notes that historically large retailers have concentrated over 60% of the market, and 23% to 30% of a food producer's expenses went precisely to logistics up to the shelf, which accrued in retail as margin. Now this logistics component has grown manifold: the disappearance of a single node changes routes, increases stock at other points, the number of shipments, and delivery time. Entrepreneurs are forced to spend funds on dispersing capacity to ensure the survival of staff and the preservation of goods, not merely to optimize costs.

From hub-and-spoke to decentralization: a historic reversal

A distribution center exists to cheapen delivery: suppliers bring goods to a single hub, from which mixed shipments to stores are formed. This is the classic radial hub-and-spoke model, whose development in civilian retail began in the late 19th to early 20th century thanks to the postal giants Montgomery Ward and Sears. In the 1970s–1980s, Walmart scaled the model, combining regional DCs, its own logistics, and cross-docking (transshipment through a warehouse) and turning the system into a competitive advantage. World War II, in turn, was a period of active development, standardization, and scaling of military distribution systems: large regional node structures, prioritization, palletization, transshipment, and inventory control were worked out then, parts of which later passed into civilian logistics. The economics of the system are simple: one large warehouse is cheaper to maintain than many small ones. But the current war has turned the very principle of concentration into a target—the retailer now calculates not only the cost of operating a DC but also the price of losing it.

Fresh categories in the zone of maximum risk

The most acute situation has developed in categories with a short shelf life. According to Oleksandr Bondarenko, CEO of the Bureau of Investment Programs and founder of GreenInvest, about 80–100 thousand square meters of cold storage have been destroyed in Kyiv and the Kyiv region. This means that even with production and imports preserved, the processing, storage, and distribution of perishable goods (dairy products, meat, vegetables, fruits) become many times more expensive. Chains are forced to cut back the range of fresh products, increase the share of frozen and canned items, and rebuild supply chains onto shorter but more expensive routes. For the consumer, this manifests not in empty shelves but in a quiet yet steady rise in prices for basic foods.

Contradictory data

When comparing figures from different estimates, discrepancies arise in scale and methodology of calculation. RBC-Ukraine cites 24.7 billion hryvnia as the "estimated aggregate sum of direct losses of individual players" based on 61 cases, while Pro-Consulting estimates indirect losses to the warehousing sector at 6 billion dollars (which at the 2025 rate amounts to around 250+ billion hryvnia). The difference is explained by the fact that the first figure records confirmed direct damage to specific companies, while the second models the systemic effect across the entire sector, including lost profit, rising insurance rates, and recovery costs. In addition, the source text mentions an estimate "according to Dragon…", which is cut off in the provided version and cannot be verified. Thus, the real aggregate damage may either exceed or fit within the cited ranges depending on the calculation horizon and the inclusion of indirect effects.