The Russian Defense Ministry announced the return of 106 Russian prisoners of war from the territory of Ukraine as part of the exchange. How many soldiers returned from the territories occupied by the Russian Federation to Kyiv is not specified. The message was published in the Telegram channel. The Ukrainian side has not yet reported on the exchange.
The servicemen will be taken to Moscow, where they will undergo a “rehabilitation course”.
“The released military personnel will be delivered to Moscow by aircraft of the military transport aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces for treatment and rehabilitation in medical institutions of the Russian Ministry of Defense. All those released are provided with the necessary medical and psychological assistance.”
Voluntary surrender (Article 352.1 of the Criminal Code) is considered a crime for Russian military personnel, the punishment is imprisonment for a term of three to ten years. At the same time, the Supreme Court clarified that it would be the deliberate surrender of captivity that would be considered a crime if it was possible to avoid this and provide “resolute resistance” to the enemy. There will be no corpus delicti, only if the soldier is not able to evade captivity, for example, he is seriously wounded or shell-shocked. Lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov explained in a conversation with The Insider that Joseph Stalin did something similar in his time with the help of the decree of the Red Army 270 of August 16, 1941 "On the responsibility of military personnel for surrendering and leaving weapons to the enemy." This document served as a prologue to the repressions against Soviet prisoners of war, up to a third of whom, after being released from captivity, ended up in the Gulag or were sent to certain death in penal battalions.