The Russian opposition website Meduza reported that Russian soldiers who refused to take part in the invasion of Ukraine receive “punitive” records in military books. For this, special stamps were made marked “prone to betrayal, lies and deceit.”
Such an annotation could be found, in particular, in the documents of a soldier of the 136th separate guards motorized rifle brigade stationed in the city of Buynaksk, Dagestan in the Caucasus. Military lawyer Maksim Gribenyuk, quoted by Meduza, said the stamp had the words: “Prone to betrayal, lies and fraud. He refused to participate in the special operation on the territory of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics and Ukraine.”
This information was confirmed on Twitter by Ivan Zhdanov, one of the associates of the imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
According to Gribenyuk, such behavior towards military personnel who refused to participate in the war “serves only to insult and humiliate the soldier, as well as to hinder his employment, including in law enforcement agencies.” The Russian Ministry of Defense called the reports about the stamps “manipulation”.
In recent weeks, there have been numerous reports of Russian soldiers evading service in Ukraine and deserting from the battlefield. Faced with difficulties in recruiting the military, Moscow demanded, among other things, mercenaries to the Syrian authorities. Forces, among others, from the self-proclaimed republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.