The State Duma made amendments to terminate criminal cases for war participants

Amendments were made to the State Duma, according to which law enforcement agencies will be able to terminate criminal cases if the accused wanted to voluntarily go to the war to Ukraine. The document appeared in the database of the Russian parliament.

The initiator of amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure was the Legislative Assembly of the Chelyabinsk Region. According to the authors of the project, the prosecutor, investigator or interrogator (with the consent of the prosecutor) will receive the right to close the criminal case if the accused signed up. We are talking about crimes of small and moderate severity, the sentence of which does not exceed five years. These are thefts, beatings, extortion, murder in a state of affect. In this way, it is proposed to increase the number of contractors in the Russian army "in connection with a change in the situation."

• In March 2023, Bloomberg reported that in 2023 the Russian authorities plan to recruit 400 thousand contractors to continue the war in Ukraine. Thus, they are trying to avoid a new wave of forced mobilization, past 2022 in the fall.
• In October 2022, the State Duma allowed to mobilize citizens with an unexpressed or outstanding criminal record for serious crimes. In 2022, the PMC Wagner recruited for participation in the war against Ukraine, according to observers, tens of thousands of prisoners from Russian colonies.