MOSCOW (Sputnik) — As many as 60,000 prisoners and 200,000 of those serving suspended sentences could be pardoned. The releases will take place over the next six months. Prisoners will not be granted pardon if they are convicted of murder, rape, terrorism, kidnapping, bribery, drug trafficking and other felonies.
The amnesty will cover minors, the elderly, war veterans, pregnant women, single parents, terminal cancer patients, and first responders who helped clean up the Chernobyl nuclear site, among others – unless they were convicted of grave offenses.
Thousands of inmates were released in 2013, in a similar amnesty to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Russian constitution. It set free two members of the Pussy Riot rock band – Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, as well as Greenpeace activists detained for scaling an Arctic Gazprom oil rig.
