DESPERATE Russians are frantically attempting to flee the country to avoid being catapulted to the frontline amid Putin’s call up.
Huge queues have built at the borders with Finland, Georgia and Mongolia as tens of thousands try to escape being sent into the tyrant’s “meatgrinder”.
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Protest erupted in 38 cities after Putin announced a partial mobilisation in a TV address to bolster crumbling efforts in Ukraine.
But they have been met with baton-wielding cops, with at least 1,386 people arrested.
As the fear of conscription ripples through Russia, some men have been hauled out of bed in the middle of the night and told they had four hours to pack their belongings and obey the mobilisation order.
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.
Footage showed Russians enlisted by Putin’s mobilisation being taken to training camps.
One man made a last-ditch attempt to escape the enlistment office in Blagoveshchensk by leaping out of a first-floor window.
Police are still searching for him.
Orders have been issued stating all men in the two million-strong pool of reserves are banned from leaving their region.
Within hours of Putin’s address, roads at Russia’s borders were jammed as desperate people tried to flee out of fear of being conscripted.
Finnish border guard’s head of international affairs Matti Pitkaniitty said 4,824 Russians arrived in Finland via the eastern border on Wednesday.
Video footage emerged of mammoth queues at the Finnish border, but a senior member of Finland’s border force said the footage was not real.
There were, however, long tailbacks at the border crossings with Georgia while others rushed for the exits to Mongolia and Kazakhstan.
Putin’s chilling announcement sparked thousands of men to scramble to airports out of fear of being conscripted.
Pictures show long queues for planes as ticket prices soared in the face of desperation.
At airports, men seeking to leave Russia were being filtered into sinister queues to check if they were liable to be mobilised.
If so, they were being blocked from departing even if they had tickets and visas for another country.
I will not let my husband go. I’ll break his both legs. His duty is to raise his children.
One-way flights out of Russia were almost fully booked this week, airline and travel agent data showed Wednesday, in an apparent exodus of people unwilling to join the conflict.
By the late afternoon, a ticket for a flight from Moscow to Heathrow was listed at a staggering £10,051.
Tickets for the Moscow-Belgrade flights operated by Air Serbia quickly sold out for the next several days.
Meanwhile, heartbroken women have 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.”
Soon after Putin’s announcement aired, panic soon flooded social networks, which surged with advice on how to avoid the mobilisation or leave the country and avoid being sent to fight in the Ukraine war.
Google searches for “how to break a hand” soared within moments.
The authorities issued 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.
VLAD ENOUGH
“It seems men with three or more children will not be mobilised.”
New protests are scheduled today by opponents of Putin’s mobilisation, despite 1,386 anti-war demonstrators detained in 38 cities last night.
As furious scenes broke out across the country, a recruitment office was set on fire in Nizhny Novgorod, according to local reports.
Meanwhile, videos showed men in the Russian Far East beginning a journey of thousands of miles after being 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.
In a desperate bid to stop his army collapsing amid Ukraine’s lightning counterattack, Putin signed a decree on the partial mobilisation on Wednesday.
It is Russia’s first such mobilisation since World War Two – signifying a major escalation of the war, now in its seventh month.
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