Opinions

The army is rolled up by military justice. That is not so with justice in the conditions of war

More and more servicemen are held accountable, in particular through court on the one hand, because the number of army has increased significantly. On the other hand - through an imperfect system of military justice, as well as gaps in legislation. All this complex does not work adequately and does not correspond to the realities of time, which influences both the human rights protection of the military and the discipline in the army, and therefore in general on our defense capability.

Let's take a disciplinary responsibility for example, which is one of the most common species. It is often used as a method of pressure on fighters, because it involves penalties. This process stipulates that the decision to recover the commander on the basis of an investigation. Although its order is defined by law, there is still a space for violations against the fighter.

These violations are: late notification of the beginning and grounds of the investigation, the refusal of the command to take into account oral or written explanations of servicemen, violations of the investigation, not to carry out a military investigation into the military act and refuse to provide copies or other materials of official investigation. At the same time, the military has a month to complain or appeal. So he can simply miss this opportunity.

Another common type of responsibility is material. Here, instead of the subordinate, the commander is responsible: for example, the damage was caused, but the one who did it, released from service or transferred to the rest. A separate problem is the absence of a clear mechanism for writing off lost or damaged property, which is at risk of persons who are responsible for it. During the fighting, it is often not necessary to keep the workflow.

It is also difficult to give evidence of loss, because people may not have access to the place of events where it happened. Administrative responsibility is the problem in particular in the fact that the decisions on negligent attitude towards military service are insufficiently argued and reveals the concept of "negligent attitude".

If you look at the court decisions from the beginning of martial law, we see another problem with the sanction in the form of a guarding for up to 6 months (for example, for the unauthorized leave of the military unit or place of service). However, guards are not enough today. On criminal liability, in general, the number of criminal proceedings that are in court is not so much in terms of the number of open proceedings.

Some categories of cases, such as desertion, may be closed at the pre -trial investigation stage due to the lack of a criminal offense. However, it is alarming that the number of indictments is much exceeding the number of acquittal, and by some categories, such as disobedience, there are almost absent.

It comes outwards and a problem with pre -trial investigations, which are often difficult to carry out, because servicemen can be captured, disappeared, or a criminal offense is carried out in the territory where active fighting is conducted, or in general in the territory uncontrolled in Ukraine. These are just a few trendy problems, but they show that in war, many standard methods do not work. How to reform military justice is an open question.