Anna Politkovskaya was killed on 7 October 2006. Her articles, written from behind Chechnya’s blood-soaked information wall and barbed wire, became a voice of truth — the truth about what residents of the republic were experiencing as they became a convenient and powerless collective victim of the global “fight against international terrorism”.
The Southern District Military Court upheld the decision of the Grozny Garrison Court to assign a suspended sentence to Ali Shebediev, mobilized from Chechnya. The former participant in the “special operation” refused to go to Ukraine again.
Shebediev had the status of a combat veteran and a state award. However, in August 2023, while in a military unit in Chechnya, he refused to leave for the “North Military District” zone. He explained his decision by saying that he was being transferred to serve in the military commandant’s office of Makhachkala.
Most sentences for failure to comply with command orders range from three to five years in prison. Mitigating circumstances for Shebediev were his injury and participation in the war with Ukraine.