The Federation Council proposes returning the Stalinist article on sabotage to the Criminal Code

A round table was held in the Federation Council (FC) on Monday, at which Olga Kovitidi, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation, presented a bill to introduce liability for sabotage during the SVO into the Criminal Code (CC). According to her, this is necessary to effectively “counteract Russia’s ill-wishers.” Representatives of law enforcement agencies and the scientific community generally approved the idea, but recalled that this norm of the “Stalinist” Criminal Code has a “sad history of abuse” and is “intuitively perceived negatively” in society.

Opening the event, Olga Kovitidi noted that “in connection with the active conduct of the SVO, attempts by foreign intelligence services to hinder Russia not only on the battlefield are intensifying.” To counter these attempts, legislators had previously provided for a number of new criminal offenses, including discrediting the armed forces, and clarified the concepts of treason and espionage, and all new norms “practice has shown to be extremely relevant and necessary,” said the senator from Crimea. But given the changing situation, there was a need for “an additional legal structure that would take into account new challenges in the confrontation with Russia’s ill-wishers,” Ms. Kovitidi continued: “Not only on the line of combat contact, but also in peaceful life and in the rear.”

She recalled that an article on sabotage had existed in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR since 1926 (Article 58.14 “Counter-revolutionary sabotage”). In 1958, she was expelled from there, but “such trains cannot disappear,” so sabotage was “fragmented” and actually became part of the dispositions of such articles as sabotage, negligence, abuse of authority in the execution of state defense orders (GOZ), etc., the senator explained.

Referring to the experience of states where sabotage is a criminal offense (USA, Germany, France, China), she complained that in Russia this rule “for various reasons was not implemented”: in 2014, this issue was raised by the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, in 2015 -m – the Legislative Assembly of Karelia, and later – State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Vadim Solovyov, but none of them achieved success. “There can be many points of view, and we are all obliged to study,” Olga Kovitidi concluded the historical excursion. “We must clearly and precisely define the wording.”

After that, she presented her bill, which proposes to add Art. 281.4. It will mean sabotage as “a deliberate action or inaction committed on the grounds of political, ideological, racial, national, religious hatred or enmity by a person performing his or her labor duties during a military conflict, wartime or a state of emergency, with the aim of covertly opposing government policy and management, resulting in significant harm to the legally protected interests of society and the state.” The senator did not announce the terms of punishment provided for by the amendments.

First Deputy Chairman of the Duma Defense Committee Andrei Krasov (ER) agreed that “issues of legal responsibility for committing acts aimed at harming the interests of the military security of the Russian Federation are of particular importance in modern conditions.” At the same time, he drew attention to the need to “scrupulously examine issues of proving motive,” since “problems may arise in the practice of court and investigation”:

“It is necessary to limit possible abuses by indicating that the Russian Federation must have serious reasons to believe that persons whose actions we interpret as sabotage can cause real damage to the state.”

Colonel of the Russian Guard Ilya Zubov, in turn, said that, in the opinion of his department, we should still be talking about sabotage during the implementation of the state defense order, and the subject should be the person performing the relevant functions within this process. At the same time, there should not be any intersection with Art. 285.4 of the Criminal Code (abuse of official powers in the implementation of the state defense order), the security officer added.

Olga Kovitidi responded by expressing the opinion that the issue of sabotage will be relevant “for the next 10–15 years,” and not only in the sphere of state defense orders. As proof, she cited a brochure about “civil resistance in the occupied territories,” which is distributed by the Ukrainian authorities in the new constituent entities of the Russian Federation. According to her, these “notes” give specific instructions on how to sabotage the civil service, work in municipal bodies, in medical institutions, etc. “When you go to the toilet, spend more time there than necessary,” the senator read one of them instructions.—Forget necessary supplies, pretend that work instructions are difficult to understand.” You need to “know the enemy by sight,” Ms. Kovitidi urged, and “if someone says that today we are cluttering up the Criminal Code, I am sure that this is not so.”

Associate Professor of the Department of Criminal Law of the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Evgeny Morgulenko recalled that in the first half of the 20th century the article on sabotage was “actively used for political repression”: “If you look at the statistics of the Supreme Court on rehabilitation, then there are a lot of cases: sabotage was attached to any careless crime.” But “we live in a difficult period,” and if in peacetime “there are enough cases,” now, “when we are actually at war,” criminalization is really relevant, the scientist admitted. He also recalled that the recently introduced articles of the Criminal Code relate to “arson and explosions”: “What to do with quiet opposition? We know how many went abroad, I won’t start a witch hunt, but many remained.” So that society and lawyers “don’t have any questions,” it is necessary to pay attention to such a criterion as mass participation, the expert noted: then it will be possible to overcome the “intuitive rejection of attempts to criminalize” sabotage among Russians. “And should we limit ourselves only to defense orders? Are these facts not present in the spheres of economics, state power, and local self-government? We know what it is,” added Mr. Morgulenko. Olga Kovitidi agreed that “a very clean formulation is needed”: that is why, according to her, she has not yet submitted the bill to the State Duma, although it has been ready since the fall.

The head of the Constitutional Committee of the Federation Council, Andrei Klishas, ​​told Kommersant that he is not familiar with Ms. Kovitidi’s bill.

Andrey Prah