Follow live the latest news about the war in Ukraine
The measure would allow convicts whose crimes are not punishable under Russian law to be released from prison.
Oct. 25 () –
A group of deputies from Russia’s conservative Liberal-Democratic Party will present a bill to the country’s Duma to abolish prison sentences for convicts sentenced under Ukraine’s Criminal Code in the Ukrainian territories annexed by the Kremlin.
Specifically, the measure would make effective the release of prisoners in prisons in the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, whose crimes were not registered in the Russian Criminal Code, according to the TASS agency.
“The draft federal law establishes that the criminality and punishability of acts committed in the territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, as well as in the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions (…) are determined in accordance with the norms of the criminal legislation of the Russian Federation”, states the explanatory report of the bill.
The initiative establishes that all people who entered prison in these four Ukrainian regions before September 30 – the day that Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized their independence – could be released from prison if their crimes are not punished. according to Russian laws.
“The bill is important to adapt our legislation in new regions. We adopted a similar law for Crimea, when it became part of Russia,” said deputy Sergey Leonov, one of the authors of the initiative.
The chairman of the State Duma Committee on Construction and State Legislation has previously told TASS that most of Russia’s federal laws are already in force in the annexed Ukrainian territories.
