Maybe, but I’ve seen plenty of videos of Russians attempting to surrender to drones, and getting killed anyway.
I have some questions you might ask yourself:
What is the count of those vs. the number of surrendered Russians being treated well?
Which one is more likely to be in the news?
Which one is more likely to be spread around by Russian bots?
Which will be more likely to be suppressed?
The vast majority of them could simply not have volunteered. Also, you can surrender.
Actually one of the few political pressures Putin has had to deal with internally has been preventing conscripts from fighting outside of Russian territory, which has included not sending them into the supposedly-annexed oblasts in the east. They’ve had to make do with massive signing bonuses, prison recruitment, stop loss, and PMCs to make up the manpower shortage. Definitely some high-pressure tactics in use, but no actual use of legal force. Unless this video was taken on the Kursk front then any Russian soldiers who this was targeting had signed contracts that they could have chosen not to.
The russian soldiers are in an awful predicament in this war. But they are still the aggressors and Ukraine has the right (obligation even, seeing what Russia tends to do to civilian population it conquers) to defend itself against them…and as awful as these weapons are, they have not been used in an illegal way here according to international law (something that Russia doesn’t give a flying fuck about, btw.).
Personally, I don’t see a moral issue here though I of course would prefer if noone had to die of which only happens in the case of Putin withdrawing his troops right now.
You always have a choice. There may be consequences of that choice, but you are never forced to take up arms and take the life of another person.
Again, I’m not trying to minimize or act like the consequences of that choice might not be severe, but the point remains. Each of us has a choice to make, and “just following orders” has never excused acts of evil.
