Featured Image Credit: East2West
Topics: Russia, World News, News
Joe Harker
Workers for Wildberries, a major online retailer in Russia, are reportedly being forced to undergo strip searches at work to 'avoid theft'
Video footage shows women working for the company, set up in 2004 by pro-Putin oligarch Tatyana Bakalchuk, in St Petersburg being stripped down to their underwear and searched by other members of staff.
Men working for the company are also strip searched on their way in and out, according to an undercover reporter from life.ru who spent three days working in the facility, the publication said their reporter 'felt all the charms of working' in the Wildberries warehouse.
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The searches in the morning are supposed to stop employees from bringing phones or watches into work, while in the evening workers are searched again as part of a 'fight against theft'.
Tatyana Bakalchuk - Russia's richest woman with an estimated fortune of $13.3 billion - recently faced a worker revolt over a policy to dock workers pay if customers complained about getting the wrong item delivered.
Bakalchuk and her company have both been sanctioned by Ukraine as sellers of military uniforms to the Russian military as well as being producers of propaganda.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been going on for more than a year now with no end in sight to the devastating conflict which has seen tens of thousands killed and millions of Ukrainians forced to flee their homes.
Civilian casualties have also mounted, with at least several hundred Ukrainians killed by landmines set by the Russian army alone.
Russia's efforts to invade Ukraine have thus far been met with failure, costing Putin's army a huge amount of manpower and material.
When the war ends, Ukraine will join the Western military alliance NATO, while the NATO border with Russia has grown significantly following Finland's membership being approved.
Meanwhile, an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin has been issued by the International Criminal Court over alleged war crimes involving the abduction of children from occupied areas of Ukraine.
Putin is accused of abducting Ukrainian children and taking them to Russia, so he can theoretically no longer leave Russia for a nation which recognises the authority of the ICC.
Figures within Russia who have criticised Putin or his regime have disappeared or died suddenly, with a series of 'freak accidents' occurring which have claimed the lives of several prominent Russians.
Russia itself has been placed under economic sanctions by several countries and is running short of allies, though Putin can still count on the support of China and his 'dear friend' Xi Jinping.