Russians facing criminal charges offered choice: ‘Go to war or go to court’

23 October 2024, 09:08

Russians facing criminal charges have been told they can join the fight against Ukraine instead of going to court.

The Russian parliament passed a controversial law to allow people facing prosecution to appeal to the courts to have the charges dropped against them if they sign a contract to fight in the army in Ukraine.

Russian pre-trial detention centres are expecting to have about 100 people each sign up for the army, meaning the armed forces could be bolstered by around 20,000 overall.

The decision to drop the charges in exchange for signing up to the army would still be up to individual judges, but there are no exceptions to crimes that could be pardoned in theory.

Andrey Kartapolov, the deputy who pushed the bill through the State Duma, said it would allow criminals to repay their debts to society.

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Russia has already recruited prisoners for the war in Ukraine. Victor Prigozhin, the now-deceased former head of the Wagner mercenary group, visited prisons to sign up inmates for his arms-length army.

It’s a practice that has a long history in Russia – the Soviet Union used prisoners to fight against the Nazis in the Second World War.

But it has met with condemnation in some quarters, with some onlookers saying the law undermines the principles of criminal justice.

Ekaterina Schulmann, from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin, called the move “a daring legal experiment on society.

“You have to be really desperate to do it — or you have to display sheer legal nihilism and an utter lack of understanding of how law works and why we need it.

“No society can carry on like this: it cannot encourage crime and murders at this level.”

Russia has struggled to find volunteers to fight in the war in Ukraine, with high levels of casualties in the two-and-a-half-year conflict.

Pro-Kremlin activists welcomed the move to recruit people facing criminal charges as an opportunity for law-abiding members of society to avoid the dangers of war.

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Kirill Fyodorov, a blogger on Telegram, wrote: “The front line and offensive ops are no picnic, and the chances for the convicts to get killed are very high.

“Are you willing for your son, brother or husband to stand in for them while storming open areas littered with mines?”

The war has proved extremely costly for both sides in terms of casualties.

Estimates of total casualties on either side of the war vary widely, from around 400,00 Russian troops killed and wounded to about 700,000, and from 200,000-500,000 Ukrainians.