Russia’s mobilization law theoretically allows harsher sentences for nearly any crime. In practice, courts rarely invoke it.

Exactly four years ago, an amendment to Russia’s Criminal Code, directly tied to mobilization, took effect. Under the amendment, courts could, in theory, treat almost any crime committed since September 24, 2022, as having at least one aggravating circumstance: it was committed “during mobilization” — a period that has yet to end.

The bill containing the amendment was an early sign of the coming “partial” mobilization — one we missed. It was passed very quickly. After the bill passed its first reading, a group of State Duma deputies and senators rushed to revise it.

Here is how events unfolded:

It changed Paragraph (l) of Part 1 of Article 63, “Aggravating Circumstances.” Before the amendment, it read:

The revised provision reads:

They are factors that authorities believe make a crime more dangerous to society. Courts are therefore supposed to impose harsher penalties — closer to the maximum prison term or fine.

Any aggravating circumstance also automatically disqualifies a convicted person from certain statutory sentencing “discounts” under the Criminal Code.

They are statutory limits on the length or severity of a sentence. They include:

Other breaks include:

Almost everyone who has committed a crime since September 24, 2022. There are only two clear exceptions.

First, it cannot apply when mobilization is already written into the provision defining the offense — when a separate part of that provision mentions mobilization and sets a harsher penalty. In those cases, the Criminal Code bars courts from counting it again as an aggravating circumstance (Part 2 of Article 63).

The second exception is for cases heard by a jury. If jurors find a person guilty but deserving of leniency, the court is barred from considering aggravating circumstances (Part 4 of Article 65).

No. For the most part, courts simply overlook the new aggravating circumstance and do not examine whether mobilization had any bearing on the crime. Court rulings rarely mention mobilization. Even when prosecutors or victims explicitly point out that a crime was committed “during mobilization,” courts often refuse to take that into account.

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Courts generally say mobilization had no bearing on the particular crime, such as illegal alcohol sales. That did not stop a St. Petersburg court from treating it as an aggravating factor in a case involving an unlawful supplement to a military pension.

In one case, a court ruled that the aggravating circumstance should apply only to service members who commit offenses against military service. But that reasoning conflicts with other rulings in which mobilization led to longer sentences. Those cases involved:

Overall, the rulings leave a central question unresolved: Is committing a crime “during mobilization” enough to receive the maximum sentence? Or must prosecutors prove that the offender took advantage of the situation? Or establish some other connection between the crime and mobilization?

Probably. At least, that is what lawyers who have studied the issue believe. They point to the poor wording of Paragraph (l) of Part 1 of Article 63:

Nearly all researchers say the provision is so vague that, in theory, it could apply to any case. Some lawyers have proposed rewriting it to identify the specific offenses and locations covered and to narrow the group of people subject to the aggravating circumstance.

Dmitry Trofimov, who has written several papers on the provision, proposed a different approach — removing mobilization from Paragraph (l) altogether:

After reviewing court decisions, Trofimov concluded that courts are “quite clearly ‘correcting’ the legislature’s position” by disregarding mobilization.

Not in general terms. It has addressed only the specific case of offenses against military service committed during mobilization. In 2023, the Plenum of Russia’s Supreme Court held that, under those circumstances, such offenses “pose a heightened danger to society.” It said courts should consider whether to take mobilization into account in their assessments.