Russians fleeing draft tell of three-day queues and bribes

Russian men desperate to avoid fighting in Ukraine following Vladimir Putin's conscription order have told of three-day long border queues and bribing security officials with hundreds of pounds at makeshift "checkpoints".

- BEL TREW

After his troops lost ground in recent weeks in Ukraine – which continued this weekend with the withdrawal of Russian troops from the key town of Lyman in the Donetsk region – president Vladimir Putin has doubled down on the increasingly bloody artillery war by declaring a partial mobilisation.

Moscow officials said the plan was to call up some 300,000 people with combat experience. However, Russian media reported that the number of conscripts could be as high as 1.2 million. Human rights groups, as well as Russian citizens affected by the draft, say men who do not fit that criterion, prisoners and even anti-draft protesters are also being rounded up.

This has sparked frantic scenes at various borders, as tens of thousands of Russian men scramble to flee, although the routes out are gradually closing. This week Finland joined Poland and the Baltic states in shutting its border to Russian tourists, closing one of the few remaining routes to Europe.

Those who managed to escape have told The Independent that flights out of the country were costing as much as $10,000 (£9,200) per seat, and those who took land routes to places such as Georgia were facing three-day queues to get out. They also revealed they had to pay hundreds of thousands of roubles in bribes to local security officers to get out.