Court upholds sentence to a man mobilized from Chechnya for evading military service

A court of appeal upheld the sentence of Sergey Yunusov, native of Gudermes, who was sentenced to two years of imprisonment on charges of leaving a military unit in Dagestan without permission.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on September 6, in Nalchik, a court sentenced Khizir Kugotov to a year of imprisonment, finding him guilty of leaving a military unit without permission.

According to the case materials, on February 7, Sergey Yunusov did not show up for duty in Kaspiysk and stayed in the Krasnodar Territory and the Astrakhan Region, the “Kavkaz.Realii”* reports. On March 10, shortly after returning to his military unit, the man left it without permission for the second time and did not return until March 28.

In his appeal, Sergey Yunusov claimed that the first instance court did not fully take into account the mitigating circumstances in the case, including the presence of his dependent minor child, illness of his mother, participation in the special military operation, “as well as the nomination for military awards and the fact that he was sentenced to imprisonment for the first time.”

The Southern District Military Court upheld the verdict pronounced by the Makhachkala Garrison Military Court.

*Included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) into the register of foreign agents.