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Putin signs up for 160,000 new recruits: police raid Russian gyms

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As the war in Ukraine continues, Moscow accelerates with forced methods: raids on fitness centres, ethnic identifications and forced recruitment

Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to recruit 160,000 soldiers as part of the new spring conscription, but the mobilisation in Russia does not stop at the institutional route. For weeks now, according to various reports, the police have been carrying out raids in gyms and fitness centres, looking for men who can be recruited for the army.

The operations, carried out with increasing frequency in cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg, involve the sudden raid by officers – often with masked faces – who block the men present and divide them according to nationality and perceived ethnicity. Women are generally let go, while men are asked to show their documents.

As activist and lawyer Valentina Chupik tells Current Time, Russian citizens are taken to recruitment centres, while non-Russians risk prosecution for minor offences or violations of immigration laws if they do not agree to sign up.

On 30 March, one of the Spirit Fitness gyms in the Moscow region was raided. A few days later, another hall of the same chain suffered a similar action. The accounts of those present, collected by the Telegram channel msk1, speak of moments of great tension: ‘I was on the treadmill, they touched my shoulder, and I saw everyone on the floor with their faces to the floor,’ said one witness.

In other cases, the controls appeared less aggressive but still invasive. ‘They did not force us to the ground, but asked everyone for their papers. Some were taken away,’ said another frequent visitor.

There are also those, like Anastasia, who have seen their husband twice caught in the crosshairs of forced recruitment: ‘They had already tried to enlist him two years ago. This time they took him away while he was in the gym. Only with the arrival of the lawyer did they let him go. They told him to report again, but he took leave so as not to risk being stopped on the street’.

The conflict in Ukraine does not stop, and Moscow is desperately looking for men to fuel the war effort, even at the cost of sacrificing legality and individual rights.

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