A soldier in Russia has been sentenced to 13 years in a “maximum-security” penal colony after deserting his unit to avoid participating in the conflict in Ukraine.
In response to the wave of emigration triggered by the harsh punishments for desertion during the mobilization, Moscow has been imposing severe penalties on soldiers who refuse to engage in battle.
A military tribunal in Sakhalin, a Far East island, stated that the soldier, Maxim Kochetkov, deserted his unit to evade being sent to Ukraine for a special military operation.
Kochetkov was apprehended by the police in July on the island of Sakhalin.
Although he received a nine-year sentence for desertion, the soldier’s punishment was extended due to criminal charges for leaving his unit without permission in February of the previous year.
The court has specified that he will serve his 13-year term in a “maximum-security correctional colony.”
In September of the previous year, President Vladimir Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 men to replenish Moscow’s ranks in Ukraine.
In a separate case, a court installed by Moscow in the occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine sentenced a Ukrainian prisoner of war from the Azov regiment to 26 years in prison, as reported by Russian state media.
The Azov regiment had been responsible for defending the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol before it was captured by Russian forces last spring.
According to the RIA Novosti news agency, the court stated that Ukrainian soldier Ruslan Kolodyazhny was accused of killing two civilians in Mariupol in April 2022.
The news agency further reported that the soldier would serve his sentence in a “maximum-security correctional facility.”