The Essence of the Insubordination Offence
Article 383 of the Criminal Code of Georgia criminalizes a subordinate's failure to comply with a superior's order given in the established manner, where this has substantially harmed the interests of military service. The mandatory elements are that the order must have been given in the established manner, that the subordinate was bound to execute it, and that the non-compliance caused substantial harm to the interests of the service — without these three elements no crime exists, although disciplinary liability may be governed by other rules.
The third part of the norm contains a separate composition: a subordinate's failure to comply with an order given in the established manner out of a negligent or unscrupulous attitude toward service, which has substantially harmed the interests of military service. This formulation differs from the first part in the character of the attitude and is linked to a lighter penalty. The three compositions thus cover three different situations — the general case, the case with aggravating features and the case of a negligent attitude — and the charge must rest on exactly one of them.
The element of substantial harm is the common core of all three compositions: mere inaction does not surface in a case if the service has suffered no harm, and this is the most frequent point of attack for the defence. The substantiality of harm is an evaluative category — it is not described in numerical criteria — so the argumentation of the parties and the service documentation play the decisive role: what was disrupted, how much it impeded the fulfilment of the task, and whether the consequence can be remedied.