The Northern Naval Military Court reduced the sentence of senior lieutenant Dmitry Vasilets by three months in the case of refusing to participate in the war with Ukraine. This was reported by Call to Conscience.
The verdict was softened due to the fact that earlier, according to the appellate instance, the judge did not take into account extenuating circumstances in the case of Vasilets — in particular, that he grew up without a mother and later lost his father, and also previously participated in hostilities, which could have caused him psychological damage.
In April, the Zaozersky garrison military court in the Murmansk region sentenced Vasilets to two years and five months in a colony-settlement. He was found guilty of failure to comply with an order issued in the prescribed manner in the context of an armed conflict (clause 2.1 of Article 332 of the Criminal Code). The criminal case against the man was opened in October.
Previously, a senior lieutenant served in Pechenga in the Murmansk region. In February 2022, he was sent to war in Ukraine. Five months later he was given a vacation — then he decided to go to Buryatia to the parents of a deceased colleague and later «adopted the philosophy of Buddhism», which he had long been interested in. After the rest, the authorities told him to go to the front again, but Vasilets refused to do so because of his convictions.
In August, he filed a report on the refusal of a business trip, a month later he wrote the document again — after that they brought a case against him. According to the military, the order to send him to the war was eventually brought to him four times. “I, Senior Lieutenant Vasilets, am currently a serviceman of the RF Armed Forces. I want to take into account that I am also a person and a citizen,” he explained his position in the report. publish-context-cite__image» alt=»1″ />«Give me time already , fire me, that's all.» Senior Lieutenant Vasilets explains why he refused to go to Ukraine and preferred prison (the court gave him 2.5 years in a colony-settlement)
According to the decision to initiate proceedings, Vasilets, “being healthy and fit for military service, having no medical restrictions for the execution of the order, in the presence of an objective possibility of its execution, acting deliberately, realizing the nature of his actions, refused to execute it, thereby refusing to participate in hostilities. on non-execution of orders during hostilities. Mediazona spoke about the Vasilets case in a recent study on how military objectors are tried in Russia after the start of the war.