As it became known to Kommersant, the sentence to a contract soldier with many children, who received five and a half years of general regime for unauthorized abandonment of a military unit during the period of mobilization, came into force (part 5 of article 337 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). According to the defense, the sentence was unnecessarily harsh and did not take into account that Private Matkin, who served in the coastal part of the Northern Fleet, was dependent on three young children and a spouse, and the contract with him should have been terminated.
According to the materials of the criminal case, Vitaly Matkin served in a military unit stationed in Severomorsk. He signed the contract on July 27, 2022 and was appointed as the driver of the non-sinking team in the coastal part.
On September 26, the contractor, having received permission from the command to “departure” from the location of the military unit with a deadline for returning by 15 o’clock on the same day, did not arrive at it without good reason.
Thus, according to the TFR, Vitaly Matkin “illegally excluded himself from the sphere of military legal relations in order to temporarily evade military service.” “Wishing to take a break from his official duties,” he first went to Ryazan, where his family was, and then to Stavropol, where the Matkins had an apartment.
To earn a living, the father of three young children became a private cab driver. On December 15, his car was stopped by the traffic police in Nevinnomyssk. He was taken to the police, where it turned out that he was a serviceman, located in the “Rozysk” base, since a criminal case was initiated against him because of the abandonment of the unit.
During the investigation, Vitaly Matkin pleaded guilty, however, as his lawyer Svetlana Vasilyeva, who defended him at the trial in Stavropol, told Kommersant, he did not pass the probationary period under the contract, which, in accordance with this, was to be terminated.
In addition, Matkin himself had many claims against the command due to the fact that the conditions promised in the contract were not observed either in monetary allowance or even in the issuance of overalls. “As a result, they sent him a negative reference, although he did not have a single penalty during his service,” the defender noted.
In the appeal, which the lawyer wrote to the Southern District Military Court, she noted that the Stavropol Garrison Military Court, when passing the sentence, did not take into account that Vitaly Matkin, a former employee of the Federal Penitentiary Service, who had not previously been prosecuted, is a veteran of military operations in the North Caucasus, and on his dependent, in addition to children, a non-working spouse.
Another defender, Vladimir Saneev, also noted that Matkin is the only breadwinner in the family, and in the verdict “there is no assessment of the impact of the punishment imposed” on the conditions of her future life.
In his opinion, the court also ignored the absence of aggravating circumstances in the case.
The arguments of the defense during the appeal, which was considered the other day, were ignored, and the verdict of the Stavropol garrison court remained unchanged. The term of five years and six months in a penal colony was considered by the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases to be “fair and proportionate to the deed”, as well as corresponding to the public danger of the crime committed.