Border guard from Odesa region sentenced to five years for refusing to go to combat unit

The Izmail City District Court of Odesa Oblast found a border guard inspector who served under contract in Izmail guilty of disobeying orders and sentenced him to five years in prison.

As stated in the court' s verdict, in March 2025, the military officer received an order to leave Izmail for the Kursk military base, but did not comply with the order.

He verbally told his commanders that he refused to comply with this order, so his actions were qualified as insubordination, that is, an open refusal to obey an order of a superior, committed under martial law. Given that it was paragraph 4 of Article 402 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the military man received the lightest punishment provided for by this paragraph of the article, with a maximum of 10 years in prison.

During the internal investigation, the sergeant explained his refusal by saying that he was not ready to die and leave his two children half-orphaned. There were no further violations of military discipline on the part of the serviceman.

At the trial, the soldier pleaded guilty in full and expressed sincere remorse. The court took this into account as a mitigating circumstance, and the prosecution did not provide any aggravating circumstances.

Earlier, the Primorskyi Court of Odesa approved an agreement between the driver of the training vessel unit of the Institute of Naval Forces of the National University "Odesa Maritime Academy" and the prosecutor to plead guilty to taking a bribe. He demanded the money for influencing unidentified officials of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to transfer a serviceman from a combat military unit to a rear military unit for further service. The defendant pleaded guilty in full to the criminal offenses charged. The court ultimately sentenced him to UAH 170 thousand.

Кирило Бойко