During an evening workout at Spirit Fitness in south-east Moscow, gym-goers were suddenly told to drop to the floor. This was not part of their training, however, but an instruction from Russian police hunting for illegal immigrants and military draft dodgers. Such raids have been reported across multiple Russian cities for weeks, human rights campaigners say, even before Vladimir Putin signed an order to conscript 160,000 men in the country’s biannual call-up, the largest since 2011. According to witnesses, police divide those at the gym into citizens and non-citizens. Russians are taken to enlistment offices, where their military records are checked. Non-citizens are accused of immigration violations and given a choice: deportation, or enlistment in the army, according to Current Time, an independent Russian news platform.
‘Suddenly everyone is face-down on the floor’
Footage of the March 30 raid at Spirit Fitness shows dozens of men and women lying face-down with their hands raised. Days later, another branch of the same chain was raided. Witnesses told the outlet that women were allowed to leave, while men were separated by ethnicity or nationality before being asked to produce documents. “I was on the treadmill, watching [a show], minding my own business,” a gym-goer told the Telegram channel msk1_news. “Suddenly someone taps my shoulder. I get off the treadmill and see everyone lying face-down on the floor.” Another at the gym told Current Time that police demanded all men show their passports, which were immediately checked for military records.
“They’d check the passport, flip to the military service page. If it said you were obligated to serve, off you went to the enlistment office – no matter what, just for ‘verification’.” Spirit Fitness has not commented on the incident, but staff told the outlet that raids were becoming routine. Lawyers said similar sweeps were taking place roughly twice a month in Moscow, St Petersburg, Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg. Once records are reviewed, some men are released. Others are handed military summons on the spot and detained. “My husband is in court now,” Anastasia, who lives in a city just outside Moscow, said. “They tried to issue him a summons illegally more than two years ago – even though he has an exemption. Now they’ve dragged him into the enlistment office again. I rushed over with documents, but they wouldn’t let him go until the lawyer arrived,” she explained. Migrants accused of minor infractions are offered an escape route, rights activists say: a military contract to fight in Ukraine. Valentina Chupik, a human-rights lawyer, said: “They only detain people who aren’t ethnically Russian. Then they separate citizens from non-citizens. For the non-citizens, they falsify petty hooliganism charges and deport them. Since Feb 5, that’s all it takes – even if they’ve done nothing wrong. The citizens are taken straight to the enlistment office.”
Another campaigner, who asked to remain anonymous, said the raids had deliberately targeted “ethnic gyms” – fitness centres popular among migrant communities. Emily Ferris, a Russia expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told The Telegraph that the methods were more “overtly aggressive” than most Russians were used to. “They’ve tended to more coercive methods, like suggesting to factory workers, for example, that if they don’t present themselves for enlistment, they’ll be fired,” Ms Ferris said. The Kremlin has also embraced a carrot-and-stick approach, offering large financial bonuses to entice new recruits.
A recent investigation by Janis Kluge, a fellow at the German Institute for International Security Studies, found that enlistment rates surged in March. The rise, in part, was driven by a spike in cash incentives from regional authorities desperate to meet their quotas. Every Russian region increased its signing-on bonus at least once last year and many did so again in January. Between 1,000 and 1,500 volunteers are now signing up each day, according to Mr Kluge, compared with around 600 per day a year ago. Moscow’s recruitment surge comes as Donald Trump, the US president, continues to press for a swift resolution to the war, frequently blaming Volodymyr Zelensky, his Ukrainian counterpart, and Ukraine for the conflict.
But Ms Ferris said the recruitment drive shows Russia is not yet ready for peace, even if new recruits are not immediately sent to the front line. The Kremlin, she said, wants to seize as much ground as possible before agreeing to a ceasefire. Crucially, she noted, Ukrainian forces still control areas of Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions along the southern border, a non-starter if Moscow is going to agree to a ceasefire. “I think they’re going to drag this out, perhaps over the next year,” Ms Ferris said. “They can’t commit to a ceasefire where the front line currently is. “The front line is in their favour, that’s possibly what these new recruits are for. They could be for auxiliary forces that could help Russia move the dial a little bit more.”
