[YouTube] Once the legal justification was laid the very next day on September 21st 2022, Russian President Putin announced in an address to his nation that he was enacting what was called a "partial mobilization of 300,000 troops'' something that hasn’t happened since the call up by the Soviets in World War II. Did Russia react with applause and jubilation? No. There was an immediate backlash with thousands of people fleeing Russia to avoid the draft. Exactly how many have left is still up for debate but on October 4th Forbes Russia reported that as many as 700,000 people have left the country. The Kremlin denies these reports but the Russian FSB did admit that over 200,000 left Russia within the first week alone. This is not an unprecedented reaction to news of a draft. During the vietnam war draft in the United States a recent estimate claims between 60,000 and 150,000 people left the US to avoid service mainly heading to Canada and Sweden. To get a sense for how Russians felt about this move we can look at the Levada Center poll, conducted directly after the announcement in September it found that 47% of surveyed Russians said they had felt "anxiety, fear, and horror" Another 23% reported "shock," while 13% felt "anger and indignation" and 23% said they felt "pride for Russia." polls of course can be misleading but I think these numbers paired with the images of miles of cars and trucks trying to escape Russia show just how much of a shock its been. Russian markets took a nose dive in reaction to the news. The Russian Trading System Index plummeted by over 5%. Additional stress is added to Russia’s economy by Putin signed a decree granting a one-time payment of 195,000 rubles or about $3,000 dollars to all mobilized men. That might not sound like a whole lot but at scale it starts to add up. The Chuvash Republic in Russia for instance is owed about 400 million rubles or $6.4 million USD in backpay that their mobilized men have yet to receive which is causing tensions in the population.