Thousands of desperate Russians are scrambling to flee the country to dodge Putin’s mobilisation, as miles-long queues form to escape into border countries.
Men of fighting age are racing to avoid a potential call-up after Putin ordered Moscow’s first mobilisation since World War Two, with plans to immediately start conscripting some 300,000 troops to fight on the frontline.
Many flights were sold out yesterday amid the panic, while others appeared to resort to drastic tactics to avoid the conscription, with Google searches for ‘how to break an arm at home’ – skyrocketing hours after Putin’s speech.
A wife from Tyumen in Siberia said: ‘I will not let my husband go. I’ll break his both legs. His duty is to raise his children.’
The authorities issued a a special warning issued to potential recruits that they face legal sanctions if they self-harm by breaking arms or legs to avoid the call-up.
Photos and videos have also emerged of airports crowded with young men and heavy traffic near border crossings, driven by fears the country might lock down and send more civilians to war.
Yesterday, flagship carrier Aeroflot said it was not ‘yet’ banning young men from travelling, suggesting travel restrictions may soon be in place.
And a dramatic night time picture from Vnukovo airport in Moscow shows men trying to escape before they are prevented.
A dramatic night time picture from Vnukovo airport in Moscow shows men trying to escape the country before they are prevented
Queues of cars trying to get out of Russia form on the country’s border with Georgia hours after Putin announced mobilisation
Traffic arriving at Finland’s eastern border with Russia (pictured) ‘intensified’ during the night, the Finnish Border Guard said early on Thursday
Almost all the men – mainly aged 25-35 – were summoned near to passport control for interrogation.
They were questioned on whether they had bought their ticket after the Putin mobilisation announcement, and whether they had a return ticket.
They were asked about the purpose of their trip and their military status, and if they answered satisfactorily, a female officer escorted them to the passport control and signalled to the officer that they were permitted to leave the country.
Some were then quizzed again by the FSB officer at passport control.
It is not known how many were stopped from flying.
Separately, a video showed major queues at a border crossing between Russia and Kazakhstan in the Kulunda district of Altai Region .
‘The overwhelming majority of people are Russian men,’ said an eyewitness.
‘Many do not know the procedure for crossing the border – this can be seen from their confused behaviour .
Heavy traffic has formed near border crossings, driven by fears the country might lock down and send more civilians to war
Men of fighting age are racing to avoid a potential call-up after Putin ordered Moscow’s first mobilisation since World War Two
‘They are probably going abroad for the first time.’
Traffic arriving at Finland’s eastern border with Russia ‘intensified’ during the night, the Finnish Border Guard said early on Thursday.
‘The number clearly has picked up,’ the Finnish border guard’s head of international affairs Matti Pitkaniitty told Reuters.
‘It is an exceptional number in the sense that it clearly is busier,’ he said, adding that the situation was under control and border guards were ready at nine checkpoints.
Tens of thousands of others sought to flee the country, with queues at borders from Finland to Georgia and to Mongolia.
Women were not barred from leaving by Putin’s new Iron Curtain.
New protests are scheduled today by opponents of Putin’s mobilisation, despite 1,386 anti-war demonstrators detained in 38 cities last night.
Anger has also erupted on social media and a new word was even invented to describe the hell Putin has unleashed – ‘Mogilisation’, from the Russian word ‘Могила’ [Mogila] – or grave, the morbid fate awaiting thousands drafted into the army.
Yesterday, plane ticket prices skyrocketed, with a family of three having to fork out £44,000 to fly to Johannesburg, while the cheapest flights to Dubai were costing more than £8,000 – about ten times the average monthly wage, for a one-way economy fare.
According to Russian investigative news outlet RBK, all plane tickets to countries where Russians would not need a visa, including Turkey, Armenia and Georgia, sold out, while flagship airline Aeroflot is not displaying any available flights.
Some alleged people already had been turned back from Russia’s land border with Georgia and that the website of the state Russian railway company collapsed because too many people were checking for ways out of the country.
Videos showed men in the Russian Far East beginning a journey of thousands of miles after seemed summonsed for war
Putin announced plans to immediately start conscripting some 300,000 troops to fight on the frontline
Meanwhile, those being sent to war were today given just four hours to pack their belongings.
Videos showed men in the Russian Far East beginning a journey of thousands of miles after seemed summonsed and sent for military training before going to the front in the war with Ukraine.
In Dalnegorsk, seven time zones east of Moscow in Primorsky region, mobilised reservists were videoed on a bus as an officer took a roll call.
In regional capital Vladivostok, men were seen reporting to an enlistment office with their belongings having been summoned to be sent to Putin’s war.
In Ussuriysk, a 62-year-old trauma doctor – who in theory does not qualify for mobilisation – was summonsed.
His furious wife refused to take the document.
The mobilisation staff then went to the clinic where he worked, ‘posing as patients’, and handed him the summons to the war.
He was given four hours to pack and leave, it was reported.
The same timescale was reported elsewhere in the Russian far east, with men being woken in the night and told they had fours to obey the Putin mobilisation edict.
Men are pictured queueing up to board flights out of Russia at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport
Huge queues are seen in the early hours today at Russia’s border with Georgia, with drivers having to wait for 5 hours to get out of Russia
Queues of cars trying to get out of Russia on the country’s border with Mongolia are seen after the call-up
There were reports of people cowering behind doors and refusing to accept the military summonses.
In Luchegorsk, men who refused to open doors at night were handed the summonses when they arrived at work this morning.
Some 60 men were taken to Bikin, in Khabarovsk region, and sent into the hands of the Russian military machine.
Desperate women even threatened to break their husbands’ bones so they were unfit for the call-up.
A wife from Tyumen in Siberia said: ‘I will not let my husband go. I’ll break his both legs. His duty is to raise his children.’
The authorities issued a a special warning issued to potential recruits that they face legal sanctions if they self-harm by breaking arms or legs to avoid the call-up.
Other ploys were men seeking to wed women with multiple children.
Anna, a Muscovite, 46, said: ‘A friend, a single mother of five was proposed to today.
‘She laughed so hard when she told me about it, and said looks like she will be super popular in the near future.
‘It seems men with three or more children will not be mobilised.’
Almost all the men at the airport – mainly aged 25-35 – were summoned near to passport control for interrogation
Newly-mobilised men walk towards a conscription point in the Far East of Russia
But many men were seeking to leave Russia altogether rather than face the hell of the frontline in Ukraine.
One man who left Russia by air said: ‘I am 33 and I have a military ID [so is liable to be mobilised], but [it shows] I am not fit to serve because of my health.
‘I flew out to Bishkek [capital of Kyrgyzstan]. ‘All men are now stopped at Sheremetyevo airport [in Moscow], their documents are taken away.
‘They are all asked if they served in the military, and when they bought their tickets. ‘Next is either an interrogation, or they are left to go in 15 or 20 minutes after a thorough document check. ‘I wasn’t interrogated.
‘I don’t know if there are those who were not allowed to leave the country after the interrogation.’
A man from Krasnoyarsk in Siberia seeking to fly abroad via at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow said today: ‘There were 40 summonses issued yesterday among the people I knew.
‘The lists must have been prepared well in advance.’
There were queues up to five hours long on routes from Russia into Finland which has massively restricted those allowed entry.
Google data showed a family of three would have to fork out £44,000 to get to Johannesburg today in a 45-hour trip with three layovers
‘Traffic jams on the border with Finland at the checkpoints located in the Leningrad Region had not been resolved by the morning of September 22,’ reported Fontanka news outlet.
A total of 75 cars were in a backlog at Torfyanovka-Vaalimaa, 35 cars in Brusnichny, and 60 cars in front of the Imatra checkpoint.
People were spending the night in cars hoping to exit into the EU.
A video showed huge queues in darkness at the Russian border with Georgia, which has become a favourite destination for people seeking to flee Putin’s war.
At the frontier with Kazakhstan, an escapee said: ‘We left Saratov at 6pm to Uralsk in Kazakhstan.
‘It was a bad road, and a giant jam at the border.
‘Nearly everyone I managed to speak said they were running away from mobilisation.’
On the Russian border with Mongolia in the Buryatia republic cars were reportedly queuing for ‘many hours’.
Men mobilised by Russia were told they would have a credit holiday on debts as the government sought to sweeten the pill of the call-up.
Furious Russians used social media to demand that MPs should be the first to be mobilised.
All plane tickets to countries where Russians would not need a visa, including Turkey, Armenia and Georgia, have sold out, while national carrier Aeroflot is not displaying any tickets for today
But one – in ruling party United Russia – claimed he was making a sacrifice by remaining at his desk in parliament.
‘Sometimes it seems that writing a statement and going to the front is probably the easiest decision,’ said MP Dmitry Vyatkin.
But this cannot be done, because ‘MPs must convey the importance and criticality of the current situation to everyone’.
In fact, MPs are anyway exempt under Putin’s mobilisation decree.
MP Andrey Kartapolov, head of the parliamentary defence committee, said newly mobilised reservists would undergo training by officers with special military operation combat experience before being sent to the war zone.
‘The training will take place on Russian territory, on Defence Ministry military grounds, under guidance of experienced officers who have combat experience and the special military operation experience,’ he said.
Defence analyst Mikhail Khodaryonok claimed on state TV that ‘nobody will be out catching citizens at bus stops, on the street or in public places’, saying people will receive military summons at their place of residence.
Putin’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov accused the west of wanting to humiliate Russia with defeat on the battlefield.
Google searches for ‘How to leave Russia’ also increased today, data shows (pictured), as terrified civilians sought to avoid the prospect of conflict
‘The collective West, led by the United States, is openly seeking to defeat Russia ‘on the battlefield.’
‘The United States and its allies are ready to sacrifice Ukraine for the sake of their geopolitical goals.
‘To achieve them, they pump the country with weapons, and this leads to an escalated and prolonged conflict. It puts off the prospects of its settlement.’
Moscow’s NTV channel – owned by the media arm of Kremlin energy giant Gazprom – made clear the upcoming referendums on invaded regions joining Russia could only have one outcome.
Ukraine was ‘a cobbled together’ republic but its people were part of ‘the Russian world’.
‘Historically, politically, legally, however you want, this land belongs to us,’ said one academic pundit’ who insisted the lands must not be abandoned to ‘Nazis’.
The report claimed with no evidence that that ‘punishment squads’ are engaging in torture and rape in areas still under Kyiv’s control.
Kremlin propagandists sought to justify Putin’s massive mobilisation and nuclear strike threat as being due to the West threatening the future of Russia – even though there is no such threat.
On state TV’s ‘Time Will Tell’ show pundit Alexei Mukhin alleged that ‘many Western actors are openly talking of war with Russia and to ignore this kind of threat is not possible’.
Accusing the West of aggression – when it was Putin who invaded Ukraine – he said: ‘The Russian Federation in my view always acts consistently in response to a direct threat to its existence and security.’
Military expert Ivan Konovalov told viewers there was no need for ‘panic’ since only 300,000 of the total reserve of 25 million were being called up.
Contrary to the initial evidence he said these were main people who wanted to go and fight.
The West would now be facing ‘our military force’, including weapons in Russia’s ‘nuclear triad’.
‘We hope we will make do without our nuclear triad, though it is always ready,’ explained presenter Ruslan Ostashko.
Propagandist Olga Skabeyeva echoed Putin’s bogus claim that the West is using ‘nuclear blackmail’ against Russia.
With no link to reality she said the West’s aim is ‘to destroy Russia and break up the country into several regions at war with each other’.
Known as Putin’s ‘Iron Doll’, she warned viewers that the ‘possible use of the nuclear potential against Russia could have more disastrous consequences for European countries, first and foremost’.
The referendums in illegally invaded regions of Ukraine would be used to publicly insist these lands were now part of Russia, she made clear.
Russia could respond with nuclear missiles, she indicated.
‘The West is now aware that an attack on Ukraine, on those lands, and with the use of Western weaponry, including American or any other, will be viewed as an attack on Russia, with absolutely all the ensuing consequences.’
Nationalist writer Nikolai Starikov echoed the theme preached by Putin that the West want to dismember Russia.
‘As our president says fairly, they want to do to the Russian Federation what they did to the Soviet Union. To split it up into a certain number of states and sow hatred….
‘The announcement of partial mobilisation is a step forward to Russia’s victory. And no-one intends to take a step back from that victory.’
Warmongering military expert Igor Korotchenko demanded a wartime spirit.
‘There must be one slogan – ‘Everything for the front! Everything for victory!’, and everyone should be involved in this.’