Breaking with a policy that's repeated since the mid-90s, Russia won't amnesty prisoners for Victory Day this year

Federal lawmakers are not planning to adopt legislation to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany with a general amnesty of certain prisoners, Pavel Krasheninnikov, who chairs the Duma’s State Building and Legislative Committee, told the news agency TASS on Tuesday. 

“What matters to me as a lawyer and as a person who works on this is that we steer clear of any copy-pasted amnesties and avoid creating the impression that you can commit the same crimes and later you’ll be released, regardless. That would be wrong,” Krasheninnikov explained.

Only the State Duma can declare a general amnesty by the federal government. Every five years for the past 25 years (on the 50th, 55th, 60th, 65th, and 70th anniversaries of Victory Day), lawmakers had declared general amnesties. The most recent amnesty (in the spring of 2015) affected tens of thousands of convicts and several hundred probationers, as well as offenders whose still unserved sentences were delayed or commuted to lesser punishments. President Vladimir Putin submitted the legislation to the State Duma.

In early 2020, LDPR deputy Sergey Ivanov drafted legislation for another amnesty this year, in honor of the USSR’s 75th victory over Hitler. The draft law was similar to the initiative submitted by President Putin five years earlier.