Most flights out of Russia sell out, border traffic up amid conscription drive

Some draft-age Russians headed abroad on Thursday to escape their country’s biggest conscription drive since the Second World War, while explosions shook southeastern Ukraine on the eve of referendums planned there by pro-Moscow separatists. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new mobilization campaign threatens to escalate a war that has already killed thousands, displaced millions, pulverized cities, damaged the global economy and revived Cold War confrontation. Though polls have suggested widespread domestic support for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, mass conscription may be a domestically risky move after past Kremlin promises it would not happen and a string of battlefield failures in Ukraine….