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.

Wildberries warehouses in Moscow and Tambov oblasts caught fire after Ukrainian drone strikes, and the evacuation of employees was marred by violations, according to eyewitness accounts cited by Post- magazine and the independent investigative outlet iStories. In some sections, managers kept workers inside the burning buildings; employees had to open automatic gates by hand, evacuate chaotically through narrow doorways, and flee the warehouse grounds through a forest. Wildberries’ press service denies the allegations. Seven workers were killed and 25 injured in the attack on the Kotovsk warehouse; in Elektrostal, one person was killed and 61 were injured.

Warehouse managers in Elektrostal blocked employees from leaving the burning building, according to eyewitnesses and relatives who posted in the Telegram channel “Vaildberriz. Pravda sotrudnikov” (“Wildberries: The Truth from Employees”). The Telegram channel’s posts were flagged by Post- and iStories.

An anonymous reader of the channel wrote that managers allegedly tried to prevent workers from “making off with merchandise” during the fire — forcing employees to open the automatic warehouse gates themselves just to get out.

Post- spoke with Sofia, the sister of one of the people injured in the Elektrostal strike. She confirmed that when the attack began, “some senior supervisor” held her brother and other employees inside the warehouse, demanding they “calm down and not panic.” Workers eventually forced open a freight door and jumped out, Sofia said.

Sofia works at the same warehouse but was not on shift when the fire broke out. Shortly before speaking with Post-, she had been unable to reach her colleagues by phone. As the outlet reported, employees had no time during the fire to retrieve their phones, documents, or other belongings from storage lockers, leaving them unable to contact anyone.

“I know that during the evacuation the supervisors decided to follow protocol, or whatever was going through their heads,” wrote another reader of the “Vaildberriz. Pravda sotrudnikov” channel. “They were gathering employees at Block 10 and sending them to return their TSD devices [barcode scanners]. Instead of taking steps to evacuate quickly.” When the building “started coming apart,” the “supervisors” abandoned the workers and ran for the exit — not the gates, but an ordinary door — and their subordinates followed.

The reader added that the ambulance crew parked at the checkpoint, hesitant to drive onto the grounds, leaving the wounded to be ferried out by “informal local drivers.”

The same channel contains a post from an eyewitness who survived the warehouse fire. He says that in one section, the “supervisor” told employees a firefighter would open the gates — then quickly left the building. Panic broke out as people tried to open the gates themselves. The post’s author does not say whether he waited for the firefighter or managed to get out on his own.

In another section, security guards were searching employees as they evacuated. “The fire alarm didn’t go off right away,” the eyewitness recalled. “It activated when there was already a large cloud of smoke and the fire was raging. People didn’t even know there was an evacuation.” Post-, for its part, reported that the siren in Elektrostal “never went off at all.”

According to Post-, Wildberries had tried to prepare its employees for drone attacks — particularly after Ukrainian forces struck Elektrostal in the early hours of June 16. Evacuation drills were held regularly, safety procedures were “repeated every day like a mantra,” and a reference sheet was posted on a bulletin board. But when real strikes hit, each section was evacuated differently — “depending on how the section supervisor reacted.”

Far fewer accounts have emerged from the warehouse in Kotovsk, Tambov oblast, also hit by Ukrainian drones. Yet there, too, according to Post-, citing a company employee, there was no safe evacuation — or any organized evacuation at all.

The employee told the magazine that management would not let workers leave until they had finished their tasks. Only when a “massive boom” rang out did people run without waiting for instructions from management; some had to flee the grounds through a forest. No one had explained safety procedures for an air attack to workers at the Kotovsk warehouse, she said.

Warning: The following video contains profanity.

Wildberries denies any violations during the evacuation at either warehouse. The company’s press service said in its Telegram channel that all emergency exits at both facilities were opened immediately after the attack began, the emergency systems were activated “properly and on time,” and employees left the warehouses “in accordance with the evacuation plan.”

The company did not explain why some workers have been unreachable, but it set up a hotline for relatives of those who are missing.