Is it true that looting was recently decriminalized in Russia?

At the beginning of April 2022, some Ukrainian politicians, followed by the media and Internet users, reported a fresh change in Russian criminal legislation. We have verified the accuracy of such messages.

April 5, 2022 Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko posted in his Telegram channel (476,000 subscribers at the time of writing this analysis) post: “The Criminal Code of Putin’s Russia decriminalized looting. Now it’s not a crime - they officially have the right to do it.” Soon similar materials appeared in the Ukrainian press - notes were published, in particular, "RBC Ukraine", "Korrespondent.net", Sprotyv.info And "Course of Ukraine". The authors of these materials emphasized that such a change in legislation occurred not so long ago. Users also shared a screenshot from Gerashchenko’s Telegram channel different social networks from Ukraine and other countries.

The screenshot posted by Anton Gerashchenko was taken on the website base.garant.ru, where the database of the legal system "Garant" is located. On this resource you can find various legal documents - from the most important Russian laws like the Civil or Labor Code to explanatory letters from the Federal Tax Service and other departments, from international treaties to court decisions. "Garant" also offers its users historical documents, for example, codes of the USSR and individual Soviet republics.

Gerashchenko took a screenshot of one of these historical codes (moreover, it is directly indicated at the top of the image). The politician posted an excerpt from the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, adopted back in 1960. This document actually was Article 266 “Looting”, which for “the theft of things on the battlefield that are with killed or wounded people” provides punishment in the form of “imprisonment for a term of three to ten years or the death penalty.” After the Spitak earthquake in 1988, the plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR recommended judges should interpret this article more broadly, bringing to justice civilians who took advantage of the consequences of natural and man-made disasters.

The definition of looting, identical to that used in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, migrated to the criminal codes of a number of post-Soviet states (for example, Armenia, Kazakhstan and the same Ukraine). Criminal Code of the RSFSR acted in Russia until January 1, 1997, when the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, adopted a year earlier, came into force. In it the articles “Looting” really No - back in the 2000s this was the state of affairs caused discussions. Their participants, however, realized that it is not easy to clearly describe the essence of the crime, distinguishing looting from similar punishable acts, and at the same time include in such a composition the actions of looters both in war and in peacetime. At the same time, Part 1 of Art. 356 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides serious punishment, including for “the plunder of national property in occupied territory.”

Note that in the criminal codes of many European countries (for example, Netherlands, Poland And Finland) there is also no article about looting. Moreover, such a crime allocate in Swiss criminal law. Looting in peacetime (for example, during evacuations due to natural disasters), also known as "looting", is punishable in a number of US states, in particular in California, Illinois And North Carolina. 

Lawyer Denis Markov, in a conversation with Verified, urged not to look for malicious intent in the absence of a separate article on looting in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. “This is an ordinary crime against property, which is fully covered by the crimes provided for in Chapter 21 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation,” the expert explained. Markov also draws attention to the fact that, according to paragraph “l” of Part 1 of Art. 63, “committing a crime in a state of emergency, a natural or other public disaster, as well as during mass riots, in an armed conflict or military action” is considered an aggravating circumstance. “The failure to include the norm on looting in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is simply a saving in legal technique. There are already covering compositions, duplication is not necessary, even if it is necessary to somehow add weight,” Markov sums up.

The absence of an article “Looting” in the Russian Criminal Code does not mean that such acts do not provide for criminal punishment. Thus, in 2013, the court of the Smolensk military garrison sentenced four privates - they were found guilty under paragraph “c” of Part 3 of Art. 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“attempted theft of someone else’s property, committed on a large scale”). The servicemen took part in the cordon organized at the site of the plane crash of Polish President Lech Kaczynski in 2010, and one of them appropriated the wallet of a deceased member of the delegation. The wallet contained bank cards along with their PIN codes - the soldiers managed to withdraw 59,000 rubles, the rest of the funds remained in the accounts due to the limit set by the owner. The private who found the wallet was sentenced to two years in prison, the rest were given suspended sentences of similar duration. According to the same article in 2008 aroused case against two police officers who stole jewelry from passengers of an Aeroflot-Nord Boeing that crashed at the Perm airport. However, candidate of legal sciences Boris Chigidin explained “BBC Russian Service” that a sentence for theft is what threatens a looter in Russia “in the worst case.”

Thus, claims that Russia recently decriminalized looting as “the theft of things on the battlefield that are in the possession of killed or wounded people” are untrue. The norm from Soviet laws has been preserved in the legislation of some countries, but in Russia it has not existed since the entry into force of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in 1997. As lawyers explain, such a decision was made due to practical, not ideological considerations - the elements of crime described in the code already make it possible to convict the looter.

Cover photo: graffiti in New Orleans (USA, 2008; author: Infrogmation of New Orleans via Wikimedia Commons)

Mostly not true

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