They pried the gates open with their hands. They jumped from a freight door. Workers describe the chaos inside two burning warehouses run by Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer.

Workers at two Wildberries warehouses that caught fire after Ukrainian drone strikes describe a chaotic, dangerous evacuation, Meduza reports, citing eyewitness accounts gathered by Post- magazine and the investigative outlet iStories. Wildberries is Russia's largest online retailer. According to those accounts, managers in some sections kept employees inside the burning buildings, forcing them to pry automatic gates open by hand and flee through narrow doorways and even a forest. Seven workers were killed and twenty-five injured at the Kotovsk warehouse in Tambov oblast, while in Elektrostal one person was killed and sixty-one were hurt. Wildberries' press service denies any violations, saying all emergency exits were opened immediately and workers left in accordance with the evacuation plan.

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