This is a war between armies of hundreds of thousands of combatants on each side. It’s statistically impossible that neither side engaged in killing POWs, the question is who did it more? What is the culture of the army? Is it something done occasionally by individual units, hidden from commanders, or is it just accepted by the entire command structure?
During the battle of Mariupol, after cornering Azov (the hardcore Nazi unit) in the metalworking plant, the Russian forces offered them literally like a dozen chances to surrender.
To the extent that the Russian public was getting seriously angry about it!
The Azov commanders wouldn't give in*!
*They surrendered just days later
And how did the Ukrainians react to this?
Having followed this war closely from the start, the “vibe” I get is that Russia is continuously humanitarian, frequently offers Ukrainians the chance to surrender and treats POWs well on the whole as a matter of military policy, and I feel confident saying the majority of mistreatment of POWs by the Russian side would have been done by Wagner, not the RU Army. Conversely, the Ukrainian army, riddled with rabid fascists and roving paramilitaries barely under the control of the political leadership, has constantly tortured and killed POWs and gloated about it on social media. I realise I should have saved the evidence, but that wasn’t exactly the frame of mind I was in while seeing it at the time.
But when the OFFICIAL Twitter account of the National Guard posts shit like this
I think it’s safe to say ‘humanization of the enemy’ is not on the agenda.
The Russians have also NOT killed POWs.
This is a war between armies of hundreds of thousands of combatants on each side. It’s statistically impossible that neither side engaged in killing POWs, the question is who did it more? What is the culture of the army? Is it something done occasionally by individual units, hidden from commanders, or is it just accepted by the entire command structure?
During the battle of Mariupol, after cornering Azov (the hardcore Nazi unit) in the metalworking plant, the Russian forces offered them literally like a dozen chances to surrender.
To the extent that the Russian public was getting seriously angry about it!
The Azov commanders wouldn't give in*!
And how did the Ukrainians react to this?
Having followed this war closely from the start, the “vibe” I get is that Russia is continuously humanitarian, frequently offers Ukrainians the chance to surrender and treats POWs well on the whole as a matter of military policy, and I feel confident saying the majority of mistreatment of POWs by the Russian side would have been done by Wagner, not the RU Army. Conversely, the Ukrainian army, riddled with rabid fascists and roving paramilitaries barely under the control of the political leadership, has constantly tortured and killed POWs and gloated about it on social media. I realise I should have saved the evidence, but that wasn’t exactly the frame of mind I was in while seeing it at the time.
But when the OFFICIAL Twitter account of the National Guard posts shit like this
I think it’s safe to say ‘humanization of the enemy’ is not on the agenda.