Russians bought over 25 billion rubles ($290 million) in body armor, night-vision gear, and drone parts on the Ozon marketplace in a year, Verstka finds

Shoppers on the Ozon marketplace ordered dual-use and military-purpose goods worth more than 25 billion rubles between August 2025 and July 2026, the independent Russian news outlet Verstka said, citing data it obtained from the marketplace’s internal analytics.

Verstka’s journalists identified 33 categories of goods that could be used in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including tactical gear, optics, weapon components and accessories, and drones. Shoppers ordered more than 2 million units of these goods on Ozon over the year.

Tactical gear — body armor, ballistic helmets, and tactical vests — accounted for the largest share of spending among Ozon shoppers, who ordered more than 527,000 of these items over the year, totaling 9.14 billion rubles. Body armor was the single most popular product in the category.

Second on the list was military optics — scopes, night-vision devices, and thermal imagers. Shoppers ordered almost 350,000 of these items on Ozon that year, spending 7.22 billion rubles.

Ozon shoppers spent 6.26 billion rubles on drone-related products, 3 billion of which went to the “Drone and quadcopter accessories” category — mostly parts and components shoppers could use to assemble a drone themselves.

Ukrainian drones have been striking logistics centers operated by Wildberries, Russia’s largest marketplace, since mid-July. Kyiv has officially attributed the attacks to the company’s sales of goods to the Russian army; unofficially, the reason is a bid to damage the Russian economy. Ukraine began attacking Ozon’s warehouses in August.

Meduza analysts have argued that the warehouses of Russian marketplaces — like those of Nova Poshta and other similar Ukrainian companies struck by Russia — do not constitute legitimate military targets under conventions on the laws and customs of war.