The Russian Senate has developed a draft law that provides for the possibility of exemption from punishment for certain categories of convicts who “showed courage and heroism” in combat, reports Interfax.

“Together with my colleague Andriy Klishas, ​​I developed a draft law on the participation of convicted servicemen and civilians who have committed crimes of minor and medium severity in hostilities with the prospect of exoneration,” Senator Olga Kovitidi said on his Telegram channel.

Kovitidi, a senator from occupied Crimea in Moscow’s parliament, is the one who suggested last month that Russia should also mobilize conscripts generally considered unfit for military service.

On Thursday, she said the bill, drafted by Klishas, ​​another lawmaker from the United Russia party led by President Vladimir Putin, states that:

“If a convicted person shows courage and heroism while performing military duty, conscientious attitude to the performance of military service duties and thereby proves his right, then the court may release him from serving his sentence at the suggestion of the command. or the rest of the sentence, by removing the conviction or replacing the rest of the sentence with a milder type of punishment.”

Russian senators fear sending dissidents to war

Kovitidi noted that the law will not apply to those convicted of crimes related to “inciting or participating in mass riots, violation of the rules for organizing rallies, public actions to discredit the Armed Forces, propaganda of Nazi symbols and requests for sanctions against the Russian Federation.”

We will remind you that on March 25, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, made public the bill submitted to the Moscow Parliament at the beginning of this month, which provides for criminal liability for spreading “false information” about the actions of the country’s armed forces.

Subsequently, the scope of the law was expanded to include the dissemination of information, which the Moscow authorities qualify as false, about all the country’s institutions working abroad.

The law was used to arrest the last remaining Russian dissidents at large and shut down Russia’s few independent newspapers.

The Russian Parliament could officially formalize the sending of convicts to war

Kovitidi wrote on Thursday that the new legislative initiative would close a loophole in Russia’s current Criminal Code, which lacks legal mechanisms to allow convicts who want to take part in combat to do so.

The senator’s statement came after deputies of the State Assembly of Kurultay, the local legislative body of Russia’s Bashkir region, submitted a bill to the State Duma in Moscow in late September to send detainees to participate in the “special military operation” launched by Putin on February 24. .

However, the project proposed by Bashkiria legislators expressly provided that rapists and those convicted of sexual crimes could not take advantage of this measure.

If the Russian Senate approves the bill proposed by the senator and her colleague from the United Russia party, it will de jure establish the fact that Russia has sent prisoners of war to Ukraine.

Until now, the recruitment of criminals and criminals from places of deprivation of liberty has been carried out by the Wagner mercenary group, a paramilitary group that is not officially connected to the Kremlin and operates outside the administrative regime of the Russian state.

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