The soldier was found guilty of aggravated desertion for being “in a period of military mobilization” and sentenced to 13 years in prison under a “severe regime.”
A Russian court declared this Friday that it had sentenced a soldier accused of abandoning the military unit in which he was assigned to avoid fighting in Ukraine to 13 years in prison, under a “severe regime.”
In a statement, the military court in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on the island of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East, stated that the defendant was found guilty of aggravated desertion because he was “during a period of military mobilization.”
According to the same source, Maxim Kotchetkov did not report to his unit on May 10 “to avoid fulfilling his military obligations,” to “avoid being sent to the zone of special military operations.” [na Ucrânia]” and “give oneself over to idleness.”
After leaving the unit where he was stationed on the island of Sakhalin, he spent two months in the region before being detained by police on July 9, the court said.
The man was sentenced to nine years in prison for desertion, but the sentence was extended to 13 years, as he was serving a suspended sentence, handed down in February, for leaving the unit without authorization.
In recent months, Russian justice has periodically sentenced soldiers accused of desertion to prison terms.
In September 2022, the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, ordered a military mobilization in response to Moscow’s setbacks on the Ukrainian front, leading hundreds of thousands of men to leave Russia for fear of being drafted.
Source: Observadora
