Thousands of Russians have taken to the streets to protest Vladimir Putin ’s order for the country’s first military mobilisisation since WW2 - with police dragging away kicking and screaming protesters, and arresting more than 1,300 people.
Putin made the announcement in a televised address in which he also announced moves to annex swaths of Ukrainian territory and threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia, declaring: "It's not a bluff."
Flights out of Russia quickly sold out, and jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny called for mass demonstrations against the mobilisation.
Russians said some people were already receiving call-up notices, and police were barring men from leaving one city in the south.
Independent protest monitoring group OVD-Info said more than 1,300 people had been detained in protests by Wednesday evening.
Footage shows clashes between protesters and police with some dissenters being pushed to the ground and then carried away.
There have been hundreds of arrests in Moscow and St Petersburg while scores more reported in Yekaterinburg.
The first demonstrations began in Siberia and one video shows an anti-mobilisation protester being detained in Novosibirsk after shouting at police and FSB officers at a rally: “I am not going to die for Putin, or for you!”
He told the armed law enforcement: “You know too well everything is f***** up!”
The man was loudly clapped by others at the anti-war rally in Siberia’s unofficial capital. A police officer bellowed at him: “I demand you to stop this illegal activity.”
A protester’s voice is heard saying “What are you doing?” as he is detained. Another asks: “Are you animals?”
In Ulan-Ude, dozens came out to protest with posters against mobilisation.
They carried posters saying: "Our husbands, fathers and brothers do not want to kill other husbands and fathers", "No mobilisation", "No war! There is no grave.”
Ulan-Ude is capital of Buryatia republic which has suffered devastating losses in Ukraine - despite being thousands of miles from the war zone.
In a country that counts millions of former conscripts as reservists, Putin's "partial mobilisation" decree gave no clue as to who would be called up. Defence Secretary Sergei Shoigu said 300,000 people would be mobilised from a pool of 25 million. Contracts of professional troops would be extended indefinitely.
Calling a mobilisation is possibly the riskiest domestic political move of Putin's two decades in power, and follows months of Kremlin promises it would do no such thing.
The war has so far appeared to enjoy popular support in a country where independent media have all been shut down and all public criticism of the "special military operation" is banned.
But for many ordinary Russians, especially in the urban middle classes, the prospect of being sent to fight would be the first hint of the war affecting them personally.
"It is clear that the criminal war is getting worse, deepening, and Putin is trying to involve as many people as possible in this," jailed opposition leader Navalny said in a video message recorded and published by his lawyers. "He wants to smear hundreds of thousands of people in this blood."
Moments after Putin's announcement, recruitment offices had already handed packs of conscription papers to homeowners' associations, said St Petersburg human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov, who advises clients on conscription. Medics in Moscow were "receiving summonses from recruitment offices en masse to come and receive mobilisation orders", he said on Telegram.
A major company told staff: "We already have employees who have received summonses for tomorrow. Everyone should be aware that it is possible they will be summoned in the morning and be unable to work the next day.
"Keep managers informed so we don't lose track of each other."
On the Moscow metro, men could be seen studying call-up papers.
"You always feel worried at moments like these. Because you have a wife and kids and you think about it," one resident said.
In the city of Kursk, closer to Ukraine, a woman married to a soldier said: "They're not letting people out of Kursk. There are police cordons everywhere, checking each car. If a man is driving, they inspect; if it's a woman, they ask her to open the luggage compartment. If the man is from Kursk, they turn you back."
