Russian Army raids evening gym class to force able-bodied men to enlist in Ukraine war

This is the shocking moment an evening in Moscow was suddenly interrupted by cops - who stormed in and took able-bodied men away to enlist in the war.

Mid-treadmill sprint and halfway through a squat set, were abruptly ordered to drop to the ground at Spirit Fitness in south-east Moscow, where were sent to hunt down and military draft dodgers, according to The Telegraph. For weeks now, raids like these have been sweeping Russian cities, human rights groups say - and the latest at Spirit Fitness is part of a broader effort to boost military numbers. It comes just ahead of President 's spring call-up of 160,000 men, the largest conscription drive in over a decade.

According to witnesses, cops first ordered gym-goers to get into two queues - citizens on one side and non-citizens on the other. The Russians were promptly carted off to enlistment offices where their military records were checked. Non-citizens were meanwhile given an ultimatum: to enlist or get deported, according to Current Time, an independent Russian news platform.

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Footage from the March 30 raid shows dozens of Lycra-clad men and women face-down on the gym floor with their hands raised. A few days later, police popped round to another branch of the same gym chain to carry out the same raid. Witnesses said women were allowed to leave, while men were separated by ethnicity or nationality before being asked to produce documents.

"I was on the treadmill, minding my own business," a gym-goer told the Telegram channel msk1_news. "Suddenly someone taps my shoulder. I get off and see everyone lying face-down." Another witness said 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 the sweeps are happening twice a month in cities including Moscow, St Petersburg, Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg. "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.

For migrants, the stakes are even higher. Human rights activists say they’re being offered a brutal version of ‘deal or no deal’: join the military, or face deportation - often on trumped-up charges. Valentina Chupik, a human rights lawyer, explained: “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, choosing to remain anonymous, said the raids specifically target “ethnic gyms”. analyst Emily Ferris from the Royal United Services Institute said the crackdown is more "overtly aggressive" than anything Russians have seen in recent years. “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 offered 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 boost was party down to a spike in cash incentives from regional authorities desperate to meet their quotas. All Russian regions have upped their signing-on bonus at least once last year - with many doing so again in January.

Mr Kluge says between 1,000 and 1,500 volunteers are now signing up daily compared with about 600 per day a year ago. It comes as US President continues to push for a peace deal. But Ms Ferris says the enlistment effort shows Russia isn't yet ready for peace, claiming the Kremlin wants to take as much ground as possible before agreeing 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."