VLADIMIR Putin is letting off rapists and murderers before they go to trial to go fight in Ukraine.
It is the desperate despot’s latest bid to keep his meat-grinder churning as some 20,000 criminals are expected to join the frontline.
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President Putin has signed a bill that enables offenders to dodge prosecution and criminal proceedings against them if they enlist to fight in Ukraine.
The Russian president’s move, which comes after earlier attempts to recruit prisoners, aims to support the nation’s increasing losses in Ukraine as the government is struggling to attract fighters.
The measure was passed into law late on Wednesday and may see some 20,000 criminals going to the warfront from pre-trial detention centres, Russian investigative media outlet iStories reports.
It will see defendants who are currently on trial for serious crimes will now having the option to appeal to the court and have all charges against them erased if they sign a contract with the defence ministry to join the Russian military in Ukraine.
According to iStories, which cited anonymous military sources, Russian pre-trial detention facilities anticipate releasing 100 inmates apiece to join the fight, potentially contributing the 20,000 additional people to the national effort.
The State Duma defence committee leader, Andrei Kartapolov, who spearheaded the bill’s passage through parliament, labelled the measure as a means of allowing offenders to make amends to society.
“The person is essentially repenting for their crime,” he remarked, alluding to Russia’s habit of enlisting prisoners in the early, most trying stages of the Second World War.
The new rule does not include any exclusions to pardonable crimes, with MPs who drafted the bill stating that the choice would be left to individual judges.
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Similar measures in the past have not permitted anyone guilty of treason, spying, terrorism, or sexual crimes against minors to avoid prosecution.
Legal experts have slammed the plan, accusing it of weakening the fundamentals of criminal justice, which hold that punishment is inevitable, The Times reports.
Ekaterina Schulmann, a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin, said on her weekly YouTube show: “This is a daring legal experiment on society.
“You have to be really desperate to do it — or you have to display sheer legal nihilism and an utter lack of understanding of how law works and why we need it.
“No society can carry on like this: it cannot encourage crime and murders at this level.”
As Russia’s professional army suffered significant losses in combat in the summer of 2022, the country began to utilise its sizeable jail population for soldiers.
Hundreds of thousands of Russian males, primarily well-educated white-collar workers, were scared into leaving the nation by a brief partial mobilisation that Russia launched in the autumn of 2022 after failing to recruit volunteers prepared to fight and die in Ukraine throughout the war.
One could interpret the new law as an effort to attract recruits in order to prevent a further mobilisation.
Some Russian pro-war bloggers meanwhile argued it is the only answer to the shortages in Ukraine.
It comes after Russia’s Defence Ministry on Thursday confirmed reports that its forces had taken control of the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, crediting what it called decisive action taken by units in its “East” military grouping.
The Vuhledar wasteland seizing marks an empty victory for Putin’s forces after two and a half years of fighting.
Meanwhile, shocking footage showed the moment Russian soldiers took a desperate leap from a moving truck to escape death following a high speed chase.
A vehicle full of Vlad’s men was seen being hunted down and ruthlessly eliminated by a FPV drone.
The video shows the Russians speeding down the road as a lethal Ukrainian FPV drone chases after them.
The soldiers are captured desperately trying to jump out of the vehicle, with one man ahead of the rest – looking to save himself.
One soldier appears to make it out, bizarrely still holding his massive gun while his pals don’t escape in time.
The video then cuts as the drone hits.
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