A wave of Russian strikes on Ukraine’s logistics infrastructure in August forced major companies to confront a new business reality: scale can become a liability when critical operations are concentrated in a single location. Nova Poshta is decentralizing its fulfillment network, while Aurora has lost a distribution center in the Kyiv region after multiple attacks. Their responses offer a glimpse of a new logistics model taking shape in wartime Ukraine.

On August 28, a Russian strike destroyed Nova Poshta’s fulfillment center and sorting depot in Sviatopetrivske, outside Kyiv. Among the assets lost was the company’s most advanced robotic fulfillment center — the product of years of capital investment, technology development and engineering expertise.

Three days later, on August 31, Aurora co-owner Taras Panasenko announced that the retailer’s distribution center in the Kyiv region had been destroyed. It was not the company’s first recent infrastructure loss: another Aurora distribution center was damaged on August 22, while a store in Sloviansk was hit two days earlier.

Two very different businesses — delivery and fulfillment and value retail — are now confronting the same systemic risk.

Centralization Is Becoming a Liability

For decades, logistics has moved toward concentration. Large automated warehouses improve inventory turnover, lower operating costs, centralize management and allow companies to serve sprawling retail networks more efficiently.

Under persistent missile and drone attacks, that equation is changing. The more inventory, equipment and operations a company concentrates in one location, the greater its exposure when that location is hit. A single strike can wipe out inventory and automated equipment while disrupting IT infrastructure and removing a critical node from an entire supply chain.

Nova Poshta’s response points to a new direction: spreading risk across more locations and designing a network that can keep operating when an individual node goes down.

Following the loss of its Sviatopetrivske facility, freight and postal branches across Ukraine will increasingly serve as local warehouses, while customer orders will be distributed among multiple locations. The company already operates nine fulfillment centers nationwide. Its new model goes further, turning a much broader portion of the network into distributed fulfillment infrastructure.

Resilience Is Becoming a Business Metric

The shift is rewriting the economics of logistics investment. In peacetime, companies could evaluate a logistics project primarily by cost per unit handled, delivery speed, workforce productivity and return on investment. Ukrainian businesses now have another metric to consider: the cost of keeping operations running when infrastructure fails.

Resilience comes at a price. More warehouses mean more complex inventory management, additional transportation routes, more equipment and potentially higher staffing costs. But the alternative can be far more expensive: losing a single major hub can disrupt a substantial share of a company’s operations.

The logic increasingly resembles the architecture long used in technology: systems are designed to continue functioning even when individual components fail. Applied to physical logistics, that means backup warehouses, redundant routes, distributed inventory, direct-to-store deliveries and the ability to reroute goods quickly when a node goes offline.

Scale Becomes a Form of Insurance

For the largest operators, geographic reach offers another advantage. Aurora ended 2025 with more than 1,800 stores in Ukraine and over 60 in Romania. Revenue reached UAH 16.1 billion, including VAT, in the first quarter of 2026, up 27% year over year. The retailer opened another 59 stores in Ukraine during the quarter alone.

At that scale, every retail location can potentially become part of a broader logistics network.

Nova Poshta is pushing the concept further by turning its existing branch network into part of its fulfillment infrastructure. An asset originally built to serve customers gains a second role as a backup logistics node.

The result is a model in which resilience comes from a large number of interchangeable locations rather than a single heavily protected hub.

The Critical Asset Is the Ability to Keep Operating

Despite significant infrastructure losses, both companies continue to operate and expand.

After losing one of its most technologically advanced facilities, Nova Poshta is rebuilding its fulfillment model and supporting publishers and retailers whose inventory was destroyed at the site. The company is developing individual compensation mechanisms and assistance programs to help partners replace lost print runs.

Aurora also continues to scale despite strikes on its stores and logistics infrastructure. In the spring, the retailer and Horizon Capital launched Aurora Next, a program designed to support Ukrainian retailers. The initiative plans to complete two or three pilot deals in 2026, with investments of $5 million to $10 million.

Both cases reveal the same response: reallocating capital after infrastructure losses and building a model capable of withstanding future strikes.

Ukraine Is Building a Wartime Supply Chain

The August attacks exposed a problem that extends far beyond any individual company. Nova Poshta and Aurora operate in different corners of the economy, but both need decentralization, redundant capacity, distributed inventory, flexible routing and technological protection of critical infrastructure.

That reality is changing the definition of efficiency. Ukraine’s most effective logistics system may now cost more to operate. Its advantage will increasingly depend on how quickly it can recover from the loss of a warehouse, sorting center or transportation node.

Under this model, companies are effectively paying for redundancy. It raises operating and capital costs, but it also provides protection against a much more expensive outcome: prolonged disruption or a complete operational shutdown.

The implications extend well beyond Ukraine. Geopolitical conflict, cyberattacks, natural disasters and repeated shocks to global supply chains have already pushed multinational companies to reassess the risks of concentrating manufacturing, inventory and logistics in too few locations.

Ukrainian companies are being forced through that transformation under extreme conditions. Strategic decisions must be implemented between attacks, and the resilience of a redesigned network may be tested by the next strike. The goal is a logistics architecture in which the loss of one major facility no longer threatens the entire system.

For Ukrainian businesses, that capability is becoming a competitive advantage: the ability to scale while reducing the number of critical points whose destruction could bring operations to a halt.