Yesterday, December 13, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted in the first reading the draft law on the pardon of crimes committed on the territory of the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions.

Militarnyi reports this with reference to the text of the draft law.

The main provision of the draft law is the refusal of criminal prosecution for any crime, if it was committed ‘to protect the interests of the Russian Federation.’

Most of the draft law covers the settlement of issues of ‘integrating’ the occupied territories of Ukraine into the Russian Federation.

Thus, according to one of the provisions, all court decisions and criminal proceedings adopted in the occupied territories within the framework of Ukrainian legislation until September 30, 2022, remain valid in the future.

However, besides the purely legal provisions, the text of the draft law contains a fundamentally new innovation. Specifically, paragraph 2 of the article:

“2. An act, the responsibility for which is established by normative legal acts of Ukraine, is not criminal and punishable, if it contains features of a crime provided for by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, but was aimed at protecting the interests of the Russian Federation… or the interests of citizens or organizations of the Russian Federation… population and organizations of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, which are protected by law”.

That is, the new draft law allows to refuse punishment for committing illegal actions, including war crimes, committed by the Russian military during the entire period of hostilities and in the future, justifying it by actions in the interests of Russia.

Russian lawyer Mikhail Benyash explains that this thesis of the draft law legalizes any offenses.

“It turns out that the judge will be able to release a person from criminal liability for absolutely any crime. Simply because they will consider the action aimed “at the protection of the interests of the Russian Federation’”, states Benyash.

Also, the draft law does not contain any clarifications regarding what exactly the term ‘in the interests of the Russian Federation’ means.

Currently, the draft law must pass the next two readings in the State Duma and receive a green light in the Federation Council, however, given that the draft law was introduced by representatives of the pro-ruling United Russia political party, the approval process is likely to be purely formal.