“There was a lot of indignation”: deputies reduced fines for non-appearance at the military registration and enlistment office

The State Duma changed its mind about raising fines for non-appearance to the military registration and enlistment office on the agenda to 40-50 thousand rubles: the version of the bill prepared for the second reading, which will become law in the coming days, eventually promises “only” from 10 to 30 thousand for this. New punishments will come into effect from October 1, 2023, with the start of the autumn draft.

MK has already written about this bill, submitted to the State Duma back in 2019 by a group of deputies. It passed the first reading in 2021, and promised to raise the fines for non-appearance at the military registration and enlistment office to a maximum of 5,000 rubles.

Last week, the Duma Committee on State Building and Legislation approved a text prepared for the second reading, in which the amount of fines for various violations in the field of military registration was proposed in comparison with the current ones, simply cosmic.

For example, the current article 21.5 of the Code of Administrative Offenses still promises citizens a fine of 500-3000 rubles for failure to appear at the military registration and enlistment office without a good reason, either in connection with conscription, in connection with mobilization, and for failure to fulfill other obligations of a citizen to inform the military registration and enlistment office about changes in their family status, state of health and place of residence, too.

But at the suggestion of the government, on July 20, the committee supported an amendment proposing a new wording of this article, where failure to appear without a good reason at the military registration and enlistment office threatened with a fine of 40 to 50 thousand rubles. Angelica Glazkova (KPRF) then noticed that 40-50 thousand rubles is “a lot of money, especially since many of us receive salaries around the minimum wage.” “The situation is like this, and if there is no income, you just need to appear, and there will be no fine,” answered Nikolai Brykin (ER), a speaker on this issue … Penalties for other violations in the field of military registration for citizens, and for organizations, were also supposed to be increased several times, and sometimes several dozen times.

But on July 24, a new text of the document for the second reading appeared in the Duma database of legislative work, significantly revised precisely in terms of punishments for conscripts and reserve officers. It, apparently, will be adopted in the second reading on July 25 – unless, of course, at the last moment they decide to clarify and correct something else.

What do we see?

The fine for failure to appear without a good reason at the military registration and enlistment office on the agenda rises already “only” to 10-30 thousand rubles. The fine for a citizen’s failure to report a change in marital status, education, place of work (study) or position, information about moving to a new place of residence is set at 1-5 thousand rubles instead of 10-20 thousand, as expected a few days earlier.

Failure to report that you left the Russian Federation for a period of more than six months, or returned to the Russian Federation, will be punished by a fine of 5 to 15 thousand rubles (instead of the same 10-20 thousand). For those who, during the draft campaign, for more than three months left their place of residence or stay for another, but within the country, and did not inform the military enlistment office about their plans in advance, they will set a “tariff” of 10-20 thousand rubles … In general, for some offenses of citizens, the deputies decided to punish not as severely as they were going to.

Changes are being made to two other articles of the Code of Administrative Offenses that directly relate to the recruits and reserve officers themselves. Evasion of a medical examination in the direction of the military registration and enlistment office or at the medical examination in the military registration and enlistment office instead of 500-3000 thousand rubles will cost 15-25 thousand rubles. For deliberate damage or loss of military registration documents, they will be punished with a fine of 3 to 5 thousand rubles.

If we recall that last week it was supposed to be punished with a fine of 15-25 thousand rubles for the loss of a military ID, and here there is some relief. But compared to the current fines – certainly a serious tightening.

The head of the relevant Committee, Pavel Krasheninnikov (ER), told MK that the decision to reduce fines for certain offenses in the field of military registration was made last Friday, by poll, “and all members of the committee supported it.” To the question of “MK” about why they eventually abandoned their intention to raise fines for not appearing at the military registration and enlistment office to 40-50 thousand rubles, the first deputy head of the Committee, Yuri Sinelshchikov (KPRF), answered: “Because there was a lot of indignation, they took into account criticism.”

The same bill, by the way, will supplement the Code of Administrative Offenses with a new “mobilization” article: for failure to fulfill the obligation to ensure timely notification of citizens and the appearance of mobilized citizens at assembly points or military units, or “failure to assist” the organization of such notification and the appearance of officials, it will be possible to fine 60-80 thousand rubles, and organizations – 400-500 thousand rubles. Penalties will increase radically for failure to provide the military enlistment office with lists of citizens subject to military registration and failure to notify an employee or student of the need to appear at the military registration and enlistment office, and for failure to provide military enlistment offices with any information necessary for military registration. Etc.

Meanwhile, the statistics of the Judicial Department under the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation for 2022 show that seven articles of Chapter 21 of the Code of Administrative Offenses on violations in the military field (three of them concern citizens) were applied by the authorities very rarely. Courts of general jurisdiction throughout the country considered only 4 cases of prosecution in one of them, and only two citizens were punished. At the same time, in the peaceful year 2021, the military registration and enlistment offices submitted 16 cases to the courts under articles from Chapter 21 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, and punished 9 people. Apparently, in 2022, the military commissars were not up to it. There are no separate statistics on Article 21.5 of the Code of Administrative Offenses in the summary statistics.