11 March 2026

The State Duma will legislate so legal challenges to military conscriptions will not be grounds for its suspension

A group of Duma deputies lead by General Andrei Kartapolov has introduced for consideration bill No. 1170412-8, a white paper which will significantly weaken legal protections for army conscripts who have illnesses that impede their ability to serve or insist on alternate forms of service.

Currently, if a court appeal is made by a conscript against military service, ‘the conscription commission’s decision will be suspended until a court decision comes into force.’ (This is according to Federal Law No. 53, Part 4, Section 29, of 28 March 1998: On Military Obligation and Military Service). This provides at least a period of deferment for conscripts, amongst other things for them to gather evidence to argue their case. This bill’s sponsors propose to protect the right of conscripts to court appeal, but to amend Article 29 so that ‘a decision may be suspended by a court in the manner set out in the Code of Administrative Judicial Procedure.’

Kartapolov and the others reference Article 223 of the Code relating to measures for initial defence in administrative lawsuits to declare decisions and actions of bodies, organisations and persons possessing state or other public authority, invalid. This legal norm does not mandate the courts to suspend decisions made but simply provides them with this power should a plaintiff request it in an administrative lawsuit.

The Code, adopted in 2015, contains a general guideline which does not apply in cases of contradiction with special norms (such as that established by the law on military conscription of 1998). To remove the contradiction, the deputies from the Duma Defence Committee have very adeptly taken aim at the latter law.

The proposal has its legal logic but this logic is undone by the logic of law in application, which is easy to foresee.

In the context of the ongoing Special Military Operation*, judges will hardly take the side of conscripts.

This means that when an appeal does come to be reviewed in full by a court, the conscripts will already be in active military units and their ability to gather evidence for their legal case very limited. Some of them might not even be alive by the time the case goes to court.

Mobilised conscripts, or their relatives in the future, having exhausted all legal channels in general jurisdiction courts, will seemingly be able to appeal to the Constitutional Court. They may base their appeals on Article 55, Part 2, of the Russian Constitution: ‘No laws will be adopted in the Russian Federation which revoke or limit the rights and freedoms of people or citizens.’ This constitutional principle was, by the way, forgotten long ago.

* The Russian Government-approved and adopted term for the war in Ukraine, beginning with the invasion in February 2022. Using words such as ‘war’ or ‘invasion’ to describe the war in Russia is now a criminal offence, since ‘discrediting the [Russian] Army’ is contradictory to Articles 280 and 207 of the Russian Criminal Code. (Trans.)

This article has been republished with the permission of Rights in Russia. 

By Leonid Nikitinsky

Source: Novaya gazeta