Lieutenants Kept Soldier In Pit In Ground For Almost Three Days During Exercises Under Slonim

For "saving" 27 rounds of ammunition for a Kalashnikov rifle.

Two senior lieutenants mocked a conscript at the Slonim training ground and even put him in a zindan - a pit hastily dug out in the ground, where he was kept in the cold from 26 to 28 April 2018, Vitsebski Kur'er writes with reference to the NEXTA telegram-channel.

During the exercise, the soldier "saved" 27 rounds of ammunition for the Kalashnikov assault rifle to shoot on his own afterwards. Senior lieutenants of the 3rd Motorized Rifle Company of the military unit 14398 from the village of Zaslonava, Lepel district, regarded it as theft of ammunition and sent the conscript to the cold pit, where he was mocked at for two days.

The investigation lasted almost a year. On March 22, 2019, the court of Lepel district, which had been considering the criminal case against the two officers under Part 2 of Article 455 of the Criminal Code of Belarus ("Abuse of power, excess of power or inaction in power"), sentenced the lieutenants to a two-year restriction in military service with a 25% retention of the salary in the state income and without deprivation of the right to hold leadership positions.

The prosecutor's office lodged a cassation appeal. On 28 May 2019, the case was reviewed by the criminal panel of the Vitsebsk Regional Court, which changed the sentence. Stanislau Varankou was sentenced to 4 years, while Andrei Matsialionak was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months in a reinforced regime colony. Both - with the deprivation of the right to hold positions related to performing organizational and administrative activities for a period of 5 years and with the deprivation of military ranks of "senior lieutenant."

The decision of the Criminal Collegium of the Vitsebsk Region Court was appealed against. At that, the officers' arguments are quite interesting.

– Please do not misunderstand me: if there had been no stolen ammunition, there would have been no crime on our part, - one of the senior lieutenants wrote in his cassation appeal, according to NEXTA. - In such a situation, it was necessary to isolate the soldier, and there were no other premises at the training ground. During the active phases of the exercises, we ourselves live in trenches, dugouts, huts, which, no matter which way you look at it, represent an ordinary pit, either in the woods, or in the fields and swamps, in the open air, and nobody thinks that it may be "special cruelty" and "mockery" towards servicemen of all categories and ranks, too. Even the very call-up for urgent military service can be regarded as some psychological violence and creation of conditions of special cruelty and mockery of the conscript: the unwillingness of most people to go to the army is a well known fact, because nobody wants to spend a year and a half in the army, as he would spend this time earning money or doing something else, and the restriction of his freedom and rights, forced separation from his family and friends is a coercion to do something that he absolutely does not want to do.

The Supreme Court of Belarus will now have to pass the final judgment in the criminal case of the soldier, two senior lieutenants and the cold zindan.