DESPERATE Vladimir Putin is using press gangs to snatch reluctant army recruits off the street and drag them to war in Ukraine.
“Conscript-catchers” launched raids in Moscow and St Petersburg to hunt draft dodgers and even grounded a holiday flight to haul off the co-pilot.
Teams of agents backed by sinister FSB agents have been touring neighbourhoods armed with facial recognition cameras.
Police goons and enlistment officers lurk on street corners, at metro station and near blocks of flats ready to swoop.
The gun-toting recruiters even reportedly cruise offices seeking men for Putin's hated mobilisation for the "meat grinder" war in Ukraine.
“They are acting like dog catchers,” said one resident.
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“It’s sickening how they are dragging men away as cannon fodder.”
At the Polyustrovo Park residential complex in St Petersburg, men of mobilisation age were trapped near the entrance for summonses to be served.
In Moscow, there was a mass delivery of summonses at underground stations, reported Ostorozhno News.
Eyewitnesses said security goons quizzed male passengers, served some of them with call-up papers and took them away in police cars.
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Meanwhile holidaymakers were delayed for nine hours after the first officer was conscripted by one of Putin’s snatch gangs.
The junior pilot was taken away after passengers had already boarded the AzurAir flight from Ufa in the Urals to Antalya in Turkey.
They were told: "Due to the mobilisation and subsequent prohibition on crossing the border for the co-pilot, take-off has been cancelled."
A passenger named Vadim said: “Everyone was shocked. The military enlistment office came for the co-pilot. It was insane."
Pavel Chikov, prominent lawyer and human rights activist, said there were “increasing reports of raids”.
He said: “There are cases of summonses being served on the street, citizens being detained by the police in the subway and hotels, and their forced delivery to enlistment offices or mobilisation points.
“This practice is illegal.”
Senator Andrey Klishas – from pro-Putin United Russia party – called for checks on whether it was legal to pluck men from the metro and force them to the war.
Bloodbath
The authorities are using city police, traffic police, FSB security goons and residential databases to track down possible dodgers.
They are also raiding offices to root out men of mobilisation age, even though Russians were promised that only one per cent of the male population would be sent into the bloodbath.
“Police officers walk around the floors and take men of military age,” a source told online news site The Village.
“In the morning there was one paddy wagon – it was filled and a second was brought.
“They took our administrator and other men who were on the first floor.
“Men are caught in the corridor."
Reservists – which includes anyone who has completed compulsory military service – are liable for mobilisation to the lower ranks up to the age of 35.
Junior officers can be called up to the age of 50 and senior officers up to 55.
The conscript-catching raids scotch previous Kremlin claims the first wave of mobilisation is over, and that no second wave has begun.
Today Putin announced 222,000 men had been mobilised so far and the call-up will be completed in two weeks.
Mobilisation has been chaotic, with drunken recruits filmed brawling in the street.
Others were reportedly made to go hungry and sleep on hard floors because of a shortage of beds, food and uniforms.
Some recruits were sent to the front with rusty rifles and 60-year-old tanks.
Desperate young men reportedly got pals to break their bones so they can escape the call-up.
And hundreds of thousands are estimated to have fled across the border into Georgia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
Russia is on the run after stunning counterattacks by Kyiv's forces in the east and south.
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Officials in occupied Kherson city told Russian civilians to flee as Ukrainians advanced to within 12 miles.
President Zelensky has vowed to push on and liberate every inch of Ukrainian territory, including annexed Crimea and the Donbas.
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