Resilience by Force and Frustration

Shelves in Ukrainian grocery stores have suddenly emptied. No eggs, no salt, no fruit, no vegetables, no dairy, but signs reading: "This product was destroyed by Russia." This was the consequence of a series of Russian strikes in late summer 2026. With Kyiv’s air defence stocks running low, missiles and drones have been hitting warehouses that service millions of Ukrainians, with striking precision.

Among civilian infrastructure targets, supply logistics took the hardest hit: distribution centres of major supermarket chains, as well as storage facilities belonging to online commerce giants such as Rozetka, Ukraine’s analogue of Amazon, and private delivery companies, such as Nova Poshta.

According to Forbes Ukraine, since the beginning of July alone, Russian strikes have destroyed more than 400 000 m² of warehouse space across Ukraine, affecting large retailers and thousands of SMEs alike. Some businesses are reportedly considering temporarily relocating abroad. Rozetka lost its largest distribution centre—beyond restoration—and billions of hryvnia in damages. Novus’ main logistics centre and two Epicentr complexes were levelled.

The Summer Hit Wave

But the most acute, immediate losses are the so-called ‘cold’ stores—those holding dairy, meat, vegetables, and fruit—already scarce, especially as Ukraine, like the rest of Europe, has been suffering heatwaves. Roughly 100 000 m² of such storage was reduced to rubble in Kyiv and the region in the latest wave of strikes.

Within a few days, gaps on the shelves became visible to shoppers. According to the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce, producers deliver goods to a large distribution centre and, from there, to supermarkets. When a missile knocks out a collection point, an entire network may fall out—even if the stores themselves are intact.

That old model will have to be reimagined: businesses will likely abandon large hubs and deconcentrate towards smaller warehouses, making logistics more mobile and returning to more direct interaction between producers and retailers. This also reflects a wider, cross-sectoral pattern and follows the dispersion and decentralisation trend the government has adopted to keep providing vital services since the full-scale invasion began. The fuel and energy markets have already travelled that very path of decentralisation.

By the fifth year of the Big War, Ukrainians have learnt to stock tinned goods and supplies for immediate needs, while small local community vendors and farmers’ markets often come to urban areas’ rescue. So, there is little panic, and little panic buying. Businesses, too, have lived through many heavy missile strikes and learnt to rebuild their processes, sometimes in a matter of hours. They will all continue to adapt simply because it is a matter of survival. But surviving is not striving. Many SMEs may not survive, and jobs have already been lost because of these attacks.

Lessons in Parallel

Economists also draw a parallel with February 2022 — and remain optimistic, recalling that even then, the situation had normalised by the third week after the initial shock, despite roads and cities being effectively cut off.

More parallels exist. A meeting between the prime minister and affected businesses discussed establishing reserve warehouses in neighbouring countries and a customs corridor with simplified procedures for rapid border crossing, echoing the “solidarity lanes” model for trade with the EU. That ‘migration’ solution, the same logic applied to data centres before the full-scale invasion, allowed digital and banking services to continue uninterrupted. This time, the government was also instructed to prepare a list of state-owned premises within the country that could be handed over to affected businesses.

The Retailers Association of Ukraine acknowledges localised disruptions and temporary disappearances of individual items but sees no grounds to speak of a shortage of essential goods. Businesses will also have to diversify and find alternative supply networks and backup routes— the lesson successive crises, from Covid to energy, have been teaching Ukraine, as well as its European partners. Urgent as it is, this lesson has been difficult and slow to implement, in part because it is ultimately expensive for the consumer.

So, food prices may inevitably rise. And Russia will inevitably try to amplify the scale of its kinetic attacks through its information operations.

Weaponising Memory, Short and Long

The experts’ caution, however, does not stop people from posting and reposting apocalyptic footage of empty supermarket shelves, alongside other information ‘junk’, on social media. As was the case with the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this last winter, the blame for deteriorating food security, in the enemy’s telling, is laid on Kyiv, with the country supposedly heading towards large-scale famine.

Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation connects this narrative to the Kremlin’s systematic military campaign to manufacture a shortage and an information and psychological operation (IPSO in Ukrainian jargon) aimed at provoking public anxiety about access to food. Beyond a basic human need, food has a much deeper historical meaning. This is something that every Ukrainian knows as the Holodomor, a massacre by starvation that killed up to 4 million people in 1932-33, scarred the nation, and was orchestrated by Stalin’s regime in Moscow. Some outlets reportedly went as far as invoking the coming of a Holodomor 2.0.

Russia claims that it only targets military enterprises and logistics, and that Ukraine’s strikes, especially the recent successful ones, only provoke further ‘retaliatory’ shelling. The Russian MoD Telegram account, meanwhile, has promised to “freeze [Ukraine] this winter” with drones, confessing to a war crime in advance.

The Russian messaging around the current crisis, too, portrays it as a direct and foreseeable consequence of Ukraine’s military and political leadership’s actions. This is deliberate manipulation: Russia has already targeted all kinds of civilian infrastructure, including shopping centres, Nova Poshta terminals, and even food production plants since the very first days of the full-scale invasion in 2022—well before Ukraine developed the deep-strike capabilities to retaliate, or could hit first Russian Wildberries warehouses. Russia’s strikes against Ukraine’s civilian supply, logistics, and infrastructure make no pretence of a military rationale other than terror—food and energy terrorism. Nor will Moscow stop these attacks. It has already declined and evaded many proposals for a mutual halt.

It is important to remember—and effectively communicate—who the real culprit is, responsible for years of suffering or, one might say, resilience. But so is preparing for the upcoming cold season and the anticipated energy crisis. Businesses will need fuel reserves for transport and generators—that is, if they survive the next drone and missile strikes. Meanwhile, Ukraine is entering winter short of weapons to defend itself.

Sustainability and Survivability

Patriot interceptors Ukraine cannot produce on its own (at least not yet), but it produces more food than it consumes. 80% of goods on the shelves of Ukrainian supermarkets are of domestic origin.

Historically an agricultural heavyweight, Ukraine has a saying: “від лану до столу,” which roughly translates as “from farm to table” or “from harvest to table.” Translated into policy, it closely mirrors the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy aimed at sustainability and food security. And as such, the folk tradition, wrapped in wartime modernity, acquires a literal, practical meaning as well.

Rebuilding—whether a destroyed facility or a supply chain—costs more than foresight would have cost. So, the time for decentralisation, diversification, and dispersion across all sectors, from public administration to energy and food security, is actually now—not when the next crisis or missile hits.