The warehouse in St Petersburg was raided earlier this week (Picture: Anton Gerashchenko)
Vladimir Putin’s forces recently conducted a raid at a vegetable warehouse in St Petersburg to draft migrant farmers working there.
Amid collapse in morale in Russia’s military and men fleeing across the border to Georgia and Moldova, the Kremlin is desperate to get its hands on more soldiers for the frontline.
Police were spotted in action this week detaining foreign nationals with Russian citizenship tobring them to military registration and enlistment offices.
Footage shows officers arriving at the storage facility, filled with crates of fruit and vegetables, and checking the documents of employees there.
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Police were seen checking the documents of staff at the warehouse (Picture: Anton Gerashchenko)
‘Citizens, attention please! You will be taken to the district military commissariat for further military registration,’ an officer can be heard telling them.
A group of at least a dozen men can then be seen being huddled into a police van.
They were then rushed to an enlistment office in the Frunzensky District of the city.
It is understood altogether 100 people from Central Asia were detained during the two-day raid.
At least a dozen men were seen being marched to an enlistment centre (Picture: Anton Gerashchenko)
Russia’s RBC reported that the police called this practice a ‘new option’ to check compliance with migration laws.
It is part of the Kremlin’s latest efforts to ramp up the number of troops deployed to Ukraine amid the progressing counteroffensive.
In Cheboksary and Novocheboksarsk, men who had recently received citizenship and were not registered with the military were also detained.
This comes just a week after 700 people were taken to police stations following another raid on migrants in St Petersburg’s Apraksin Dvor district.
‘About 700 people were taken to police stations,’ a police spokesperson said. ‘As many as 482 of them were released after a check.
‘About 140 people were referred to the migration services to be checked for the compliance with Russian migration laws.
’22, whose identity has not been established, are kept at the police station. 30 were recognized as violators of the procedure of stay in Russia’s territory.’
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At least 100 people were detained during a two-day raid.