Three nights in a row, three different regions, the same target - warehouses. Logistics centres belonging to the Russian retail giant Ozon are burning from the south of Russia northwards, and the pattern is far too tidy to be coincidence.

The first strike came on 22 August in the Samara region. The following night it was the Orenburg region's turn. On 24 August the strikes were simultaneous - Krasnodar, Adygea and the Stavropol region.

A fire broke out at each of the facilities. Hundreds of employees were evacuated, work halted. The company's management confirmed the damage and a disrupted delivery network.

Nobody is shooting at soldiers, they are shooting at the chain

This is not a new tactic but a continuation. In previous weeks the warehouses of rival Wildberries got the same treatment. According to Ukrainian sources, the aim is the logistics infrastructure supporting Russian military operations.

The logic is cold and comprehensible. Modern war is not fought with shells alone - it is fought with lorries, pallets, storage depots and people who know where everything is. Destroy the warehouse and you have killed nobody, but you have made sure things do not arrive where they need to be. That is cheaper than a frontal assault and harder to patch up.

Along with it comes a second, quieter effect. When a state tells its public everything is going to plan while employees at ordinary commercial warehouses deep in the interior are evacuated three nights running - the gap between the statement and reality becomes visible to everyone.

The story that rarely gets told

In every report on these attacks the figures cited are about facilities, about fires, about interrupted deliveries. The people inside them appear only as "the evacuated" - a category, not persons.

These are warehouse workers. People who sort packages for online orders and support their families on that wage. Not one of them decided anything about any front. Does anyone here, on either side of any border, ever think that way about the people on the second shift?