Russia has officially deployed a battalion formed of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) to the frontline in Ukraine, further confirming a myriad of apparent Russian violations of the Geneva Convention on POWs.
Russian state-controlled outlets reported on December 28 that soldiers from the “Bogdan Khmelnitsky” battalion, formed of Ukrainian POWs and subordinated to the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Ministry of Internal Affairs “Kaskad” formation, took part in their first engagement against Ukrainian forces near Urozhaine, western Donetsk region.
Wouldn’t arming your POWs, and grouping them in a battalion, be a risk?
What is Russia doing to prevent this group from staging a mutiny and turning their guns on their captors? I imagine the Russians have some sort of leverage over these poor folks.
It’s a Russian battalion…
Even if they have guns they’re not functional and don’t have ammo.
They’ll just be dressed up like a typical Russian soldier and told if they don’t run at Ukrainian defenses, they’ll be shot.
If they die, Russians get to see where the defenses are.
If the Ukrainians hesitate to see if they’re POWs, then they might hesitate every time a wave runs up. Or another patch of POWs might have a backpack with a bomb in it.
“Hey we thought we weren’t committing enough war crimes, and we sure as shit aren’t gonna let Israel beat us… MORE!”
They must have members of their family hostage or something. Otherwise I don’t see how that would even work.
You. Run towards the front line.
If you don’t, I shoot you in the stomach now then torture you until you die. You never see your family and friends again.
If you do, you’ll probably be shot and killed, but who knows? If you surrender at the right time, you might make it home. Probably not. But maybe?
I’m sure it’s easy behind a keyboard to think you’d be strong after being a POW given those choices. But you wouldn’t. If you would, you’d have been tortured to death already.
It’s not a video game. It’s not a movie. You’re not a main character.
I don’t know why I feel like I’m being criticized.
I’m not saying that what’s reported isn’t possible or isn’t real. I just don’t know how that tactic would work.
Everyone’s given me some pretty good suggestions though. So I better understand how they could have pulled it off.
All I know is there’s got to be some cruelty involved to convince POWs to do that.
I think you underestimate Russian cruelty. A country that can normalize sending its citizens into an absolute meat grinder has no problems being beyond barbaric with its POWs. I have no doubt Ukranian prisoners are suffering a fate even worse than we can imagine. In circumstances like that suddenly it might just be worth it to accept your fate being killed by your countrymen. Hell maybe you can even get back to them.
The Germans did the same thing in ww2 and in many instances the soldiers either killed their captors or surrendered the first chance they could.
