Translated material
Shoots of democracy
The Supreme Court allowed soldiers to desert once due to hazing
Deserters can be acquitted if they left the military unit in which they served “due to a combination of difficult circumstances.” This wording appears in the resolution adopted last Wednesday by the plenum of the Supreme Court of Russia. The document is called: “On the practice of courts considering criminal cases of evasion of conscription for military service and military or alternative civil service.”The resolution refers only to military personnel who left their place of service without permission for the first time. The country’s highest judicial body recognized “objectively existing unfavorable life situations of a personal, family or service nature” as a “confluence of difficult circumstances”, under the influence of which a person in uniform fled from the location of a military unit.
In the resolution of the plenum of the Supreme Court, such situations include a serious condition or the funeral of parents or close relatives. This is understandable. Finally, this also includes hazing, which made it impossible for a soldier or sergeant to be in the unit. That is, don’t wait until they beat you to death or, like Private Sychev, make you deeply disabled, but run for your life. Moreover, as the Supreme Court document emphasizes, such a fugitive will be acquitted if there is no opportunity to receive medical care. In this case, the court (garrison, district) must pronounce an acquittal for desertion - due to the absence of corpus delicti.
At the same time, it should be borne in mind that if difficult circumstances are eliminated or no longer exist, and the soldier does not return to the unit from AWOL, “for subsequent evasion from service” he will be held criminally liable. It is interesting that now a crime such as unauthorized abandonment of a unit or desertion will have a statute of limitations. For example, if a soldier or sergeant fails to confess and is not detained, then the crime will cease to be considered such if the period of conscription service or the time of alternative service has expired. In other words, if a person has sat out and hid for the required amount of time - until the age of 27, when the period for conscription of Russian citizens for military service expires, he can no longer be judged.
It’s more difficult for those who have chosen an alternative service. After January 1, 2008, the “amnesty age” for them can be either 28 years 9 months or 28 years 6 months, depending on their length of service. Conscripts called up for military service after January 1, 2008 can only be forgiven at the age of 28. And it’s really bad for contract deserters, including officers: desertion for them is considered a complete crime upon reaching the age limit for military service. For a contract soldier it is the end of the contract period; for a captain, for example, it is 45 years.
The resolution of the plenum of the Supreme Court on the pardon of deserters is perhaps the only document in the security sector that was favorably accepted by the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers. “This is a good, useful document,” said the chairman of the union, Valentina Melnikova. - This is a paper that needs to be implemented. It’s important to change the psychology here.” The document is also welcomed by lawyers, who will now find it much easier to defend in court young soldiers who have escaped from barracks hooligans.
By the way, there have never been many criminal cases under the article “Desertion”. However, as under the article “Abandonment of a unit without authorization,” although up to 20 thousand a year are “absorbed” in the armed forces. The low number of cases brought is partly due to the fact that in order to be convicted, the intent to never return to the place of duty must be proven. And this is practically impossible. The situation is similar to that with an article on libel, where intent must also be proven - as opposed to error. Deserters are most often simply afraid to return to their unit.
Considering this circumstance, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, long before the release of the decision of the plenum of the Supreme Court, carried out so-called preventive measures to return unauthorized persons to military units. Those who “realized” were advised to contact the nearest military prosecutor’s office, military investigative department, military registration and enlistment office, commandant’s office, territorial internal affairs bodies or civilian prosecutor’s office. At the same time, military prosecutors reminded: in accordance with the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, a serviceman who left his unit without permission or deserted can be exempted from criminal liability if he did it for the first time and the action was “the result of a combination of difficult circumstances.” Over the last three months of last year, more than 1,300 AWOLs and deserters voluntarily returned in response to the call of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office.
Similar actions have been held since 1998. Thus, the decision of the plenum of the Supreme Court legislates what military prosecutors have already been doing for several years. The main thing is that unambiguous instructions were given to military courts, which, as is known, determine the degree of punishment.