A Russian court has sentenced a contract soldier to five years in prison for refusing to go to fight in Ukraine, we learned officially from judicial sources on Thursday.
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The trial took place at the military court in Ufa, in the Republic of Bashkortostan (Urals).
Not wanting to “take part in the Russian special military operation” launched in Ukraine last February, Marsel Kandarov, 24, did not show up in May at his place of duty, the unified press service said in a statement on Thursday. courts of Bashkortostan.
In September, he was “found” by the police, according to the same source.
He was found guilty of evading military service for more than a month during a period of mobilization and was sentenced to five years in a prison camp, the statement said.
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 reservists, following a series of Russian military setbacks in Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of Russian men had left Russia in stride to escape mobilization, in particular by going to neighboring countries of Russia such as Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan.
Separately, a military court in Moscow sentenced a mobilized reservist to five-and-a-half years in a harsh prison camp for “hitting” an officer during an argument, the official Russian news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.
According to the news agency, the reservist expressed his “dissatisfaction” with the organization of the training of mobilized soldiers near Moscow, before spitting smoke from his cigarette in the face of an officer and kicking him. fist.