On September 1, the Southern District Military Court upheld the sentence of conscript Pavel Kamagurov, who was sentenced to seven years for unauthorized abandonment of his place of service (Article 337 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). According to the publication "Kavkaz. Realii", this is the harshest of the known sentences under this article in the south of Russia.
According to court documents, on December 15, 2022, Kamagurov, who was called up for military service "as part of partial mobilization, in order to temporarily evade the performance of military service duties, wanting to see his mother and wife, without good reason left his place of service" and went home to the village of Tatsinskaya in the Rostov Region, where he "spent time at his own discretion", drinking and causing conflicts with his wife.
In February 2023, he was summoned to the military commandant's office in the city of Millerovo, where he was given an order to report to his unit on February 9. However, "he decided that he wanted to stay at home for a while longer and did not leave for the military unit, but continued to live in the village." On March 10, military personnel came to his home and took him to the military commandant's office.
In court, Kamagurov partially admitted his guilt, saying that he went home to rest with the permission of the battalion commander for 2-3 days, and then called him and each time received permission to stay home. After January 1, 2023, telephone contact with the commander was lost, and he decided to stay home, since he did not know where to return to.
Meanwhile, a representative of the military unit in court said that none of Kamagurov's commanders had let him go home, but he had previously "demanded constant supervision over himself, since he had repeatedly committed unauthorized abandonment of the military unit for several hours to several days."
On June 14, the Novocherkassk Garrison Military Court found him guilty of leaving his place of service for more than a month and sent him to a general regime colony for seven years.
Kamagurov's defense attorney asked to lighten the sentence in his appeal, taking into account mitigating circumstances: partial admission of guilt and repentance, participation in the SVO, gratitude from the commander of the North Caucasus District of the Russian National Guard troops, and the fact that his wife has a young child. However, the appellate court left the sentence unchanged. As stated in the ruling of the Southern District Military Court, "during his illegal stay outside the sphere of military legal relations, the convicted person was often in a state of alcoholic intoxication, did not take part in the life of his wife and her young child from her first marriage, as a result of which the convicted person's wife and her child were forced to move into a rented apartment." The remaining circumstances were taken into account by the court of first instance.
As calculated by the publication "Sibir. Realii", after the start of mobilization, 156 criminal cases were opened in Rostov Oblast alone under "military" articles: desertion, failure to comply with an order, abandonment of a unit.
Thus, mobilized Zufar Akhtyamova received 6 years in a strict regime penal colony for a 4-month absence from service. He escaped during leave, hid with relatives in Georgia for a month, then returned to Russia and was detained at the border when he tried to leave for Abkhazia to earn money.
Contract soldier Boris Soloshchenko received 5.5 years for leaving his unit and then turning himself in to the military investigation department. In court, he stated that the military unit did not provide him with the necessary training, that he needed medical care, but this did not affect the sentence on appeal.
Contract soldier from Dagestan Abdurashid Tyulparov was sentenced to 2.5 years in a penal colony for not returning to the 136th motorized rifle brigade in Buinaksk after leave.
