CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSONS WHO COMMIT UNAUTHORIZED ABANDONMENT OF THE BATTLEFIELD OR REFUSE TO USE WEAPONS

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to determine the main socio-demographic, service-role, criminal-legal, moral- psychological and motivational characteristics of persons who commit an unauthorized abandonment of the battlefield or refuse to use weapons during combat, as well as to clarify the significance of these characteristics for the qualification of the act, its investigation and prevention. The article examines the characteristics of persons who commit unauthorized abandonment of the battlefield or refuse to use weapons during combat. The study is based on Article 429 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the current rules of military legislation, and contemporary scholarly works devoted to military criminal offenses, the personality of the offender-serviceman, and criminalistic and criminological aspects of violations of the order of military service. It is argued that the description of such persons cannot be reduced to a merely formal definition of a special subject of the offense. It includes a combination of socio-demographic, service-role, criminal-law, moral-psychological, and motivational features manifested in the conditions of actual combat. The article shows that proper legal qualification depends not only on the formal military status of the person and the fact of participation in combat, but also on the place of that person within the military command structure, the real duty to use weapons, the level of training, psychological resilience, exhaustion, perception of the situation, and motives of conduct. Particular attention is paid to distinguishing this offense from related acts and to the value of offender characteristics for investigation, prevention, and individualization of criminal liability. It is concluded that a person who commits an unauthorized abandonment of the battlefield or refuses to act with weapons is not just a special subject of a military criminal offense, but a serviceman who is actually included in a specific combat situation, within the framework of which he is assigned a real duty to maintain a position, act in combat order and use weapons in accordance with the order and the situation. That is why its characterization should begin with a combination of legal status, service role and objective conditions of the battle. Without such a combination, it is impossible to properly qualify the act or distinguish it from related criminal offenses and other situations in which there is no conscious unlawful refusal of combat duty. The content of the characterization of such a person is multi-level. It covers socio-demographic, service-role, criminal-legal, moral-psychological and motivational features.