Desperate Russian wives threaten to break their husbands' BONES so they are unfit to join war as thousands of men scramble to flee country with airports crammed and huge traffic jams after conscripts are given 'four hours to pack and leave'
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 dramatic night time picture from Vnukovo airport in Moscow shows men trying to escape the country before they are prevented
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.
.......................................................................................................
'Seven months into this conflict, Russia lacks sufficient manpower in the field to achieve any of its objectives and the mood of Moscow is changing quickly,' Mr Heappey said.
He claimed the Russian President and the country's defence minister Sergey Shoigu had 'backed themselves into a corner'.
'They have sent tens of thousands of their own citizens to their deaths, ill-equipped and badly led,' the minister continued.
'They're now to send hundreds of thousands more with little training and no winter uniform into the teeth of the Ukrainian winter against an opponent that is well-motivated, well-equipped and succeeding.'
'Neither Putin nor Shoigu's lies, threats and propaganda can disguise the truth: Russian conscripts are going to suffer horribly for the Kremlin's hubris.'
Mr Johnson, who was widely praised for his efforts in supporting Ukraine while he was PM, told MPs that Britain must be prepared to give more military and economic assistance.
'At this turning point in the war, it is more vital than ever that we have the strategic patience to hold our nerve and ensure that the Ukrainians succeed in recapturing their territory, right to the borders of 24th February,' he said.
'And, if possible, to the pre-2014 boundaries because that is what international law demands.'
Mr Johnson claimed Mr Putin's mobilisation order had caused 'panic among people about to be fed into the meat-grinder of Putin's warzone'.
'Yesterday, in a single day, the price of a one-way air ticket from Moscow to South Africa went up to $50,000,' he added.
'Because those potential conscripts can see that what began as a war to rebuild the Soviet empire has collapsed into a shameful war to save Putin's face.
'And they have no desire to be sacrificed on the alter of his ego.'
A haunting video also shows a group of enlistees from Stary Oskol in Belgorod region being taken away into their military service.
The footage shows a conscript's child, seemingly a girl, being heard — but not seen — shouting after him: 'Papa, goodbye. Please come back. Papa, bye, Papa… Papa...?'
The child cries inconsolably as her father — somewhere in a group of men — slowly leaves, some never to return.
One claim was that these men — who are close to the Ukraine border in Belgorod region — would be first of the newly recruited to the front, but all are supposed to have at least one month's training first.
Separately, university students are seen in a video being marched by police from their lecture theatres to war service in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia — already one of the worst hit regions for bloodshed in Putin's war.
The scene at Buryatia State University came one day after the defence minister Sergei Shoigu had vowed higher education students would not be enlisted.
The despot yesterday announced that 300,000 people with previous combat experience or specialist skills will be sent to the frontlines in Ukraine, with the first batches seen kissing their loved ones goodbye today.
However, the official order was published with a paragraph ominously blanked out. Putin's spokesman says it relates to the number who can be called, and a source within the presidential palace now claims it says '1million'.
The document also makes no mention of previous combat experience and sets no limits on who can be summoned except those who are too old, sick or in jail - opening the door for virtually anyone to be drafted.
'The figure [to be called up] was corrected several times, and in the end they settled on a million,' the source told opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Russians queue for hours to get into Georgia as fears rise
Traffic arriving at Finland's eastern border with Russia (pictured) 'intensified' during the night, the Finnish Border Guard said early on Thursday
Queues of cars trying to get out of Russia form on the country's border with Georgia hours after Putin announced mobilisation
The child's father waits tob e called up to service while his child cries, shouting after him: 'Papa, goodbye…. 'Please come back. Papa, bye, Papa… Papa...?'
Anecdotal evidence from some of Russia's many regions, where military commissars are already to rounding up people for the frontlines, indicated the net is being cast far wider that Putin suggested.
Videos from Chechnya and Yakutia showed large numbers of men - some of them middle aged - being loaded on to buses to take them off to war.
Andrew Roth, of The Guardian, also claimed to have spoken to people living in a small village in Buryatia - in Russia's far east - where 20 people out of 450 had been handed papers, or around 5 per cent of the population.
Repeated country-wide, that would yield a force far larger than 300,000.
Pavel Chikov, a Russian human rights lawyer, said the decree allows conscription 'in the broadest possible terms.'
'The president is leaving it at the Defense Minister's discretion,' Chikov said. 'So in fact it is the Russian Defense Ministry that will decide who will be sent to war, from where and in what numbers.'
Speaking in New York on Thursday, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock praised Russian anti-war protesters and said no one inside the country can continue turning a blind eye to what is happening in Ukraine because 'every Russian is now going to be at risk of being drafted into this war'.
German interior minister Nancy Faeser went further, offering concrete support to deserters.
She told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that anyone who 'courageously opposes Putin's regime and therefore puts himself in the greatest danger' can apply for asylum in Germany.
A man is dragged away by Russian security forces at a protest in Moscow against Vladimir Putin's order for the mobilisation of military reservists
Police officers detain demonstrators in Saint Petersburg yesterday as protests broke out across Russia
Ratcheting up tensions, a senior Kremlin official on Thursday repeated Mr Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons if Russian territory comes under attack.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia's Security Council, said strategic nuclear weapons are one of the options to safeguard Russian-controlled territories in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The remark appeared to serve as a warning that Moscow could also target Ukraine's Western allies.
Pro-Moscow authorities in Ukraine's Russian-occupied regions are preparing to hold referendums on becoming part of Russia - a move that could allow Moscow to escalate the war.
The votes start on Friday and end next Tuesday in the Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.
Foreign leaders have called the votes illegitimate and non-binding.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said they were a 'sham' and 'noise' to distract the public.
Russia's neighbours have been on edge about a possible threat from Russia, and one of them, Estonia, announced it is starting an exercise on Thursday for nearly 2,900 reservists and volunteers, in an apparent counter to Moscow's announcement of a partial military mobilisation.