New Russian law lets criminal suspects join the army at any stage of their trial — and leaves their victims living in fear
Last week, Vladimir Putin signed into law two bills allowing defendants awaiting sentencing to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry in exchange for avoiding prison time and criminal liability. While the change may seem relatively insignificant, as suspects have had the option to go to war for months and convicts have been joining the army for over two years, the new policy represents a landmark change in Russian criminal law: prisoners now have the option to join up at any stage of their trial. Journalists from the independent outlet Cherta spoke to legal experts about the effects these changes will have — and what they mean for the victims in criminal cases.
On October 3, Vladimir Putin signed two laws that allow criminal defendants to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry before their sentencing. The measures purport to be “filling a gap” in Russian legislation, which already allows suspects and convicts to go to war but has until now not allowed defendants to sign military contracts while on trial.
Now, under Russian law, people in all four of the following categories can avoid felony charges by joining the war against Ukraine:
- Suspects in criminal cases who have not yet been indicted;
- Suspects who have been indicted and are under investigation but whose trial has not yet begun;
- Defendants who have been accused of committing a crime but who have not yet been sentenced (this is the group affected by the new bill); and
- Convicts who have been sentenced.
At first glance, expanding the option to join the military to people in the third category may seem like a minor adjustment. In reality, however, it’s the final step in a monumental change to Russia’s legal system.
“The innovation of this bill lies in the fact that [criminal suspects] will now be able to have their cases dismissed at any stage — including when their trial has already gone to court — by signing a military service contract,” a lawyer from the project Call to Conscience, which works to support conscientious objectors in Russia, told Cherta Media.
In other words, every prisoner now has the option to avoid formal punishment for felony offenses at any time — as long as they’re willing to go to war instead. If they do sign military contracts, meanwhile, there’s a good chance they’ll be assigned to assault divisions such as Russia’s Storm Z and Storm V units, which are sent to the most dangerous parts of the front and incur heavy losses.
Prisoners’ contracts with the Defense Ministry are effectively indefinite at the moment: they can’t be terminated until Vladimir Putin issues a decree ending Russia’s mobilization. However, there are several other cases in which prisoners can leave the army without criminal records: if they receive a state award, if they’re discharged upon reaching the army’s maximum age limit, or if they’re deemed unfit for service.
In addition to the potential for investigators to pressure or coerce inmates into going to war, signing a military contract can be a defendant’s free choice to avoid being held accountable for a crime.
“Now, every court sentence is essentially make-believe, and no investigations can be considered real. Previously, we had this unshakable institution: prison was a place where nobody wanted to end up. It served as a restraining factor for people who were considering, say, getting into a fist fight with their neighbor. Now prison has become unreal as well. They tell you that they’re charging you, they’re sentencing you to such-and-such punishment — but all of this can be undone at your will. You [can] avoid being sentenced and getting a criminal record. […] It’s a bold socio-legal experiment,” Ekaterina Shulman said about the new legislation in a recent interview.
There are some crimes that disqualify convicts from signing military contracts, including offenses related to extremism, terrorism, espionage, disclosing state secrets, illegal handling of nuclear materials, and pedophilia. However, Ivan Chuvilyaev, a spokesperson for the human rights group Get Lost, told Cherta that “all of these exceptions are a mere formality” and that he expects “people charged with all manner of offenses” to sign military contracts.
Dire consequences
The Russian authorities are passing this bill in order to increase the number of people in the army, multiple lawyers from human rights organizations told Cherta. Andrey Kartapolov, the head of the State Duma’s defense committee, was explicit about this: in mid-September, he said the new legislation would “expand the base for staffing our armed forces with contract soldiers, both in the special military operation and in other situations.”
“They need these amendments to patch up holes and recruit more contract soldiers. There aren’t enough convicts [in the army] — [too many] are going to remand prisons. The logic here is absurdly simple,” Chuvilyaev said.
While an explanatory note attached to the bill claims that it “will not have negative socioeconomic consequences,” this isn’t the case, according to the experts who spoke to Cherta. Lawyer Maria Davtyan, who leads the Center for the Defense of Domestic Violence Victims at the Consortium of Women’s NGOs, called the amendments “a complete breakdown of all legal and criminal mechanisms.”
“This level of lawlessness, where you can’t simply prosecute someone and absolve them of liability when they committed a violent crime, is a global precedent, of course,” Davtyan says.
Davtyan’s organization is currently representing Irina, a 44-year-old from the city of Sterlitamak whose abusive former common-law husband, Albert Aliyev, evaded criminal liability by going to war. It took the group’s lawyers three tries to get the authorities to launch a criminal case against Aliyev, and in October 2022, when he was drafted, his case was suspended.
“When Aliyev returned on leave, we managed to carry out all of the necessary investigative activities and get the case sent to court. He was put under house arrest, but he quietly returned to the special military operation, and the case was suspended again,” Davtyan said.
Aliyev was charged with three violent offenses: intentional infliction of harm using weapons, threatening death or serious injury, and intentional infliction of moderate harm to health.
In November 2021, Aliyev attacked Irina in their apartment and beat her severely, accusing her of cheating on him. “I thought he was going to kill me. My own burial was flashing before my eyes,” Irina recalls. He also cut Irina’s son’s knuckles, causing permanent damage to his joints. When the police finally arrived, Irina’s neighbors said they didn’t know anything, though Irina believes they heard her screams but were too afraid of Aliyev to report anything.
Irina recalled that after she took Aliyev to court, he told her, “You’re wasting your time — I’ll avoid punishment and nothing will happen to me.” He also threatened her, telling her he wouldn’t “allow” her to stay in the city and that he would find her.
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Irina hoped her attacker would be sent to prison. “Who can guarantee that he won’t come back [from the war] and do something like this again?” she told Cherta. According to Davtyan, there’s a high risk in domestic violence cases of the abuser repeating their crimes, and because of legal amendments in Russia in recent years, victims like Irina are “not protected at all.”
“If Aliyev wins an award or is discharged due to his health, or age, or the end of the special military operation, he’ll be exempted from all liability or punishment,” Davtyan says. “A person who committed a crime will be considered innocent, without a criminal record, and, and will be free to get a job anywhere he wants, while his victims will receive no compensation.”
After Aliyev’s threats, Irina and her children moved to a different part of Russia. Irina’s recovery from the beating took a long time. “My face wasn’t a face but a bloody mess; the bruises wouldn’t go away. I spent a lot of time going to cosmetologists, getting injections and massages, to restore my face’s structure,” she said. Now, she’s living in fear that her new address will “be disclosed somewhere” and Aliyev will find her.
The case against Albert Aliyev remains suspended. Lawyers from the Center for the Defense of Domestic Violence Victims are currently appealing this decision in court.
“These amendments devalue the work of both lawyers and investigators. Investigators, especially in the regions, have told me that this is a very dangerous situation: they can’t prosecute people who are obviously prone to committing crimes: they’ve known some of these defendants for many years; these are people with multiple prior convictions,” Davtyan said.
Providing criminal immunity to people who commit violent crimes, in her opinion, is “fraught with very serious social consequences — to say nothing of the rights of victims to have their crimes investigated and to be protected from future crimes.”
Reporting by Alexander Lisichkin. Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale.