Employees of the Wildberries logistics center in Elektrostal, outside Moscow, said that during the attack and the fire that followed, managers did not immediately allow people to leave the warehouse. Some workers said they had to open the loading gates themselves, while relatives and colleagues still have not been able to reach part of the night shift.
The reports were published by Post and Vazhnye Istorii. According to one employee, messages in an unofficial union chat said that instead of being evacuated at once, workers from Block 10 were first gathered to hand over their item-picking terminals. She wrote that managers began leaving only after the neighboring Block 9 started to collapse.
Workers said that after that, people exited through a narrow passage with a turnstile, while some opened the gates by hand. An employee from another section, Sofia, described similar circumstances. She said that after the strikes on the warehouse, one senior staff member urged workers to stay calm and did not let them leave, even though the building was already on fire. In the end, employees in Block 7 opened a loading door themselves and escaped through it.
Sofia also said that her brother, who was on shift that night, left his phone and documents inside the warehouse, and that some colleagues still cannot be reached. One chat participant suggested workers may have been kept inside out of fear they would take goods with them. Others claimed that local taxi drivers transported the injured because ambulances were not entering the warehouse grounds through the checkpoint. There is no independent confirmation of these claims.
Wildberries acknowledged that relatives of some employees at its warehouses in Elektrostal and Kotovsk have been unable to contact their loved ones. The company said some employees lost communication during the evacuation and that a hotline had been opened to help locate them. It has not commented on the workers’ allegations that the evacuation was delayed.
As for the casualties, seven employees were killed at the Wildberries warehouse in Kotovsk, and 25 people were injured. In the Moscow region, authorities said 37 people were hurt, including eight in serious condition. One resident of Elektrostal died from injuries, although it is unclear whether that person worked at the warehouse. The company’s head promised payments of 2 million rubles to the families of those killed and 1 million rubles to those seriously injured. No compensation was reported for people with moderate or minor injuries.