In Buryatia, a soldier bought a death certificate in order not to go to war

Zorigto Arabzhaev, mobilized from Buryatia, bought a fake death certificate so that he would not return to the war. He was exposed and the court sentenced the soldier to five years in the colony for desertion. This is reported by Sibir.Realii.

Arabzhaev was mobilized in November 2022. In the spring, he came on vacation, but did not return for part of it. When the military came to Arabzhaev’s home, his son showed them a certificate of his father’s death. Later it turned out that the document was fake. Military police officers detained Arabzhaev on May 4.

In court, he explained that he did not want to return to the front because of his wife’s emotional state. In September 2022, the eldest son of the Arabzhaevs died in a road accident, and two months later Zorigto was mobilized. His wife worried about him and threatened suicide if he returned to the war. Because of this, Arabzhaev decided to order a certificate of his death.

The court noted that there was a negative psychological atmosphere in the family, which influenced the defendant’s actions. At the same time, Arabzhaeva’s wife did not seek medical help. The serviceman was found guilty of desertion and sentenced to five years of imprisonment in a general regime colony.

• According to “Mediazona” calculations, during the year of mobilization, Russian courts received more than three thousand cases of arbitrary abandonment of a part with the aggravating feature “committed during the period of mobilization.” More than half of the sentences in such cases are conditional. This is done so that the convicted could be sent to the front again, the publication writes.
• According to the observations of Sibir.Realia, the harshest sentence for a person mobilized in Russia was announced in the Sakhalin region: in July 2023, Dmitriy Naryshkin was sentenced to 12 years in a colony under the general regime as a re-convict for the voluntary abandonment of a unit – the person mobilized was replaced with a conditional term by a real one, adding years of imprisonment .
• In September 2022, with the start of mobilization for the war against Ukraine, the Russian authorities tightened criminal liability for failure to comply with an order, beating of a commander, desertion, desertion, violation of service rules, and loss of military property. Most of the articles provide for punishment in the form of imprisonment for a term of up to 10-15 years.