News
A Russian court has, for the first time, convicted a female soldier of evading service during mobilization into the country’s armed forces. As reported by the publication Kommersant, the soldier in question is Sergeant Madina Kabaloeva, who is currently pregnant and had previously received a recommendation for temporary exemption from military service.
The court sentenced Kabaloeva, a native of Kabardino-Balkarian Republic in the North Caucasus, to a six-year sentence in a general regime penal colony, with the execution of the punishment deferred until the year 2032, aligning with the 14th birthday of her child, as highlighted by Kommersant.
Preceding the start of the criminal case, Kabaloeva had visited the medical facility within her military unit, where she had been granted a temporary exemption from service on account of her current pregnancy and the birth of a child in 2018. However, her apparent failure to communicate the news to her superiors resulted in her facing criminal charges.
Kabaloeva acknowledged her failure to report to her commanding officers, but explained that she assumed the medical service would have informed her superiors based on the medical certificate she had obtained.