This picture taken on February 1, 2023, shows Mary, 59, as she sews a fur coat in a fur workshop in the northern Greek town of Siatista. AFPPIX: In a large exhibition hall in northern Greece, Russian women would once strike a pose in a gold throne-like armchair, wrapped in their brand-new furs.
“We are suspending our operations. I sidelined 80 percent of my staff, a total of 52 people,“ said Akis Tsoukas, the head of the Hellenic fur federation. “My father was a furrier and I learned the craft from a very young age,“ said Apostolis Gravas, a 47-year-old who runs his family’s fur business in Siatista.
At the workshop in Chelyabinsk, southern Russia, where she found employment, Fotis said six out of eight employees were Greek.Christos Zefklis, mayor of the town of Voio, said 80 percent of residents in nearby Siatista and surrounding villages survived off the fur industry. Forty of 92 farms have shut down, and those remaining are expected to raise one million mink, down from 1.8 million in past years, said Karakoulakis.