Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed amendments to the law on military duty and military service that broaden the categories of people with criminal records eligible to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry. The document was published on the official legal information portal, as noted by Current Time and The Moscow Times.
The right to sign a contract during mobilization, martial law, or wartime now extends to those convicted or under investigation for crimes of minor and medium gravity, as well as for certain articles on illegal weapons and explosives trafficking, safety violations, and some military and transport offenses.
The Moscow Times specifies that the list also includes those convicted of banditry, participation in a criminal organization, drug smuggling, organizing illegal migration, cash smuggling, illegal handling or theft of nuclear materials, weapons and ammunition smuggling, violating safety requirements at fuel and energy complex facilities, and loss of documents containing state secrets.
The ban on signing contracts remains in place for those convicted or under investigation for crimes against the sexual integrity of minors, terrorism, high treason, espionage, sabotage, extremism, and extortion.
The State Duma approved the bill on July 22 in its second and third readings at once. The government submitted the document. Andrei Kolesnik, a member of the Duma defense committee, said that "in Rus, shame has always been washed away with blood" and that such people should be given the opportunity to "wash away the shame." According to him, most of them will be sent to assault units: "Not everyone will return from there."
Deputy Defense Minister Viktor Goremykin said the expansion of the list of articles would increase the number of potential contract soldiers, and those recruited under the new law would serve in special units separate from the rest.
The amendments were adopted amid slowing army recruitment and heavy losses in the war against Ukraine. According to various estimates, in the first half of the year the Russian army lost between 30,000 and 34,000 people monthly, while the number of new contract soldiers was about 27,000 per month. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), by early June Russia's cumulative losses reached approximately 1.4 million people, including killed, seriously wounded, and missing; at least 450,000 were killed.
Authorities began recruiting convicts for the war in 2022, allowing people with convictions for most serious crimes, including murder, to be accepted into service. In 2023, the right to sign contracts was extended to those under investigation and defendants.
Putin also signed a law banning migrants with criminal records from residing in Russia and the country's first comprehensive law regulating the cryptocurrency market.