thousands of dead, thousands of criminal cases

Exactly an hour ago, on September 21, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the so-called partial mobilization in the country against the background of failures at the front in Ukraine. According to official data, about 300 thousand people were drafted into the army, not including volunteers.

Legally, the mobilization has not yet been completed, the call for it has only been suspended by the decision of the authorities. Those who were mobilized hours ago, as representatives of the Russian authorities have repeatedly stated, will not be demobilized until the end of the so-called special military operation (war with Ukraine). They only have the right to vacation once every six months.

There are no official data on the number of dead and wounded among the mobilized, but it is obvious that we are talking about thousands of people. The Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) and “Vazhnei istorii” compiled and analyzed a list of names of the dead mobilized, known from open sources. About three thousand people are on the list. Investigators note that every fifth person from this list, whose date of death is known, did not live even two months after receiving the summons. Among the dead are a 19-year-old and a 62-year-old mobilized, but most of them die between the ages of 30 and 34. According to the investigation, the largest number of funerals for the families of those who have been mobilized come to the Sverdlovsk Region, where the number of those killed in Chukotka and Buryatia is the highest among the male population of conscription age.

For the first anniversary of mobilization, “Mediazona” summarized the statistics of criminal cases initiated under articles related to evasion or desertion. Not a single criminal case was instituted for failure to appear on a summons at the military enlistment office, the publication notes. The corresponding norm, however, has not yet been included in the Criminal Code, there is only an article on evading conscription.

In an hour, the courts received 3,049 cases of involuntary abandonment of a unit during the mobilization period. Every week, Russian courts issue about 100 sentences in such cases, and more than half of them are conditional.

Desertion, that is, leaving the service not temporarily, but permanently, is punished more severely. The harshest known sentence was handed down in the case of contract worker Maksym Kochetkov from Sakhalin — in September, he received 13 years in a penal colony. According to the article on voluntary surrender, not a single case has yet been brought to court.

Siberia.Realii provides statistics on the deaths of mobilized and criminal cases with their participation in the regions of Siberia and the Far East.

• After the announcement of mobilization last year, hundreds of thousands of people left Russia. The authorities have tightened a number of laws related to conscription into the army. In the case of the announcement of a new wave of mobilization, for example, departure from the country for those to whom the summons will be sent will be closed from the moment of its appearance in the electronic register, which should be available by the end of the year.