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Russian soldier admits proudly his comrades were killing POWs

112 comments
  • When are you guys going to abandon this tankie infested shit hole of a world news sub and go to another one?

    • Wouldn't they just move to whatever the new Community is? I think you either need to convince your instance to defederate, join something like Beehaw, or create your own instance if you don't want to see those comments.

      • The world news sub on .world doesn't have this issue, probably because the mods deal with genocide deniers there. It's good to remember .ml has been here since the beginning and most of the /c/'s here were created when basically a majority of users were tankies

  • 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?

    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. ::: spoiler 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.

    • riddled with rabid fascists and roving paramilitaries barely under the control of the political leadership, has constantly tortured and killed POWs

      Civillians too!

      remember that so suuuper cool time when Azov took a bunch of human shields prisoner, and then recorded themselves playing the terminator theme song to tweet at arnold swartzenager about how cool his support was

      Do you remember that?

      also, HORRIFYING that I could only find this video with titles that refer to the ethnic russian civilian meat shields as russian sabateurs

      fucking nazis burn all Azov

    • Not to mention the Snake Island debacle.

      If you don't recall, right at the start of the war, a small Ukrainian National Guard unit was stationed on "Snake Island", a tiny island in the Black Sea. A Russian warship approached the island and told them by radio to surrender. The commander replied "Russian warship, go fuck yourself!". The Russian warship opened fire and blew them all away. For their brave sacrifice, Zelensky posthumously awarded the "thirteen brave soldiers of Snake Island" various medals and honors, and "Russian warship, go fuck yourself! became a shining symbol of Ukrainian resistance against Russian aggression, plastered over the west's print and social media for days, until whatever the next thing was replaced it.

  • Is there an English source for this one that isn't, well, explicitly a front for laundering neoliberalism?

    Not that I doubt that Russian (or Ukrainian) soldiers are doing war crimes on the regular, but a slightly less biased source would be nice if I plan to share it.

  • A couple of things to ponder:

    1. Assume true. What would Putin say or do to this soldier if they were to meet? Publicly? Privately?
    2. Assume a Ukrainian soldier has done the same. What would Zelenskyy say or do to his soldier? Publicly? Privately?

    Think about those for a while. What will people of all priorities (pro-Russia, pro-Ukraine, anti-conflict, etc.) think about the decisions that are made and things that are said?

    I don't have the answers to these questions, but know what my guesses would be and I can see people of either side of this conflict giving any one of the possible answers and justifying it either way.

    e.g. Imagine Putin has his soldier court-martialled and shot; Some pro-Russians will proclaim this a strong move. Others will say that he should not have done that because those Ukrainians deserved to be murdered and the soldier did the right thing. Likewise if Putin was to throw this soldier in prison, some might say it wasn't enough and others might say that he shouldn't even be in there. (NB: I don't believe anyone deserves to be murdered. Ukrainian or Russian. This is all hypothetical.)

    Alternatively, we might have Putin outwardly congratulate this soldier. This would be an internationally unpopular move, more-so than having the soldier shot, because the West kind of expects Putin to "deal with" people who make him look bad, but some pro-Russians would proclaim it a strong move. Others will think that it was a bad idea but say nothing.

    Zelenskyy might have his own soldier court-martialled and shot. If he is truly interested in aligning with the West as Russia fears, he probably wouldn't do this. He'd instead have the soldier tried in court, and if found guilty, possibly even turned over to Russia if it could be guaranteed the soldier was going to be imprisoned for his crimes and not tortured or shot.

    Would Russia consider turning over their own POW murderers to Ukraine? Probably not. They don't recognise Ukraine.

    It would be nice if they did though. If they realised where their soldiers and tanks were they might be able to get them out of there and this conflict would be over. Enough lives have been lost to make up for any transgressions either way at this point.

112 comments