Eight people get up to seven years in prison for desertion after they fled draftee field camp in ‘LPR’

The Odintsovo military garrison court has sentenced eight mobilised men from the Kaliningrad region to prison terms in the case of desertion, Mediazona reported, citing the lawyer of the defendants, Yevgeny Saveskul.

The men were found guilty of desertion committed by an organised group as well as failure to obey orders during mobilisation or an armed conflict.

Junior Sergeant Yevgeny Kravchenko and Private Alexander Bogachenok were sentenced to seven years behind bars, Sailor Alexander Babeshko and Private Nikolay Kolmachev got six years, while Dmitry Medvedev, Alexander Eliseev, Igor Medvedev, and Denis Balakhin received six and a half years in prison.

All eight were mobilised in September 2022. They were taken to a field camp between the villages of Gladkovo and Malaya Alexandrovka in the Luhansk people’s republic, Ukraine’s occupied Luhansk region.

They were later informed that they would be sent to the frontline on 24 December. The mobilised men then decided to escape. They said that there was a shortage of provisions and quality uniforms at the place of service.

They made their way to Podolsk by taxi and overnight train.

“There, the Kaliningrad men came to the police station and surrendered the four AK assault rifles and four machine guns they had been issued on duty,” Mediazona notes.

After that, criminal cases were filed against the men. Yevgeny Kravchenko was sent to a detention centre, as law enforcers considered him the escape mastermind. At the same time, the other draftees said that the decision to escape was made by each of them.

All except Kravchenko were sent to a military unit in a closed military camp near Moscow, where they were supervised by the command.

Earlier, a Novosibirsk court sentenced 25-year-old conscript Vladimir Konstantinov to five years in prison for desertion during mobilisation or armed conflict.

In the autumn of 2022, the man was conscripted into the army as part of mobilisation. Before being sent to the combat zone, Konstantinov escaped from a training camp.

“After swinging over the fence, the soldier caught a taxi and drove to his mother’s house. For about three weeks, he helped her with household chores and raised his younger siblings. He is the eldest of five children,” writes Kommersant.

At the end of January 2023, he spoke to an investigator on the phone and then came to the military investigative department of the Investigative Committee for the Novosibirsk garrison.

“It’s better to go to prison than to the frontline,” Vladimir Konstantinov said during the interrogation.