Any war is a loss of life for soldiers and civilians, and of course there are prisoners of war (POW) on all sides.
The treatment of enemy civilians and of their POWs has always been the best expression of the moral qualities and outlook of the parties to the conflict. To the same extent, behavior toward POWs, as well as the behavior of the POWs themselves, is indicative of the characteristic features of the domestic propaganda of the opposing sides. It is enough to recall the examples of World War II, military conflicts in the Balkans or the war against ISIS.
The war in Ukraine was no exception. The treatment of POW Russians demonstrates that the nationalist propaganda of anti-Russian regimes of Poroshenko and Zelensky has successfully influenced the people of Ukraine.
In the first 10 days, there were several striking examples of long-established nationalist hate speech among the Ukrainian population.
In this video, a captive Russian soldier is forced to shout “Glory to Ukraine!” This is the first part of the military salute widely used by Ukrainian nationalist SS units during World War II, the full version is “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!”. The soldier keeps silent, threats can be heard in the background that he is about to be shot, after which the wounded man utters “Glory to Ukraine, Glory to Russia”. Frustrated shouts and insults are heard in the background.
This video shows a severely wounded soldier in the hospital, possibly after surgery, who is forced to shout “Glory to Ukraine!” The soldier replies that he does not understand what it means and refuses to repeat the phrase. At the end of the video, one can see that someone starts poking him with his hand, apparently in the area of the wound.
This video shows a battered Russian officer who is forced to shout “Glory to Ukraine!” He refuses. He begins to say “I’ don’t…”, after which the beatings continue.
This video shows a lightly wounded soldier who is forced to give information about the location of his unit. He refuses on pain of being shot. At the end of the video a cry can also be heard calling for him to be shot. In this video there are no calls to shout “Glory to Ukraine”, but an attempt to interrogate on the merits, but one can see the general approach to prisoners of war.
On the other hand, the videos below show the treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war, even nationalist battalion fighters. Particular attention is drawn to the absence of beatings on the faces and bodies of POWs.
In these three videos, members of AFU nationalist battalions testify in detail about their activities, deployment locations, and the condition of their units.
This video shows the Ukrainian pilot of the downed Su-25 in the hospital.
These videos show Ukrainian soldiers immediately after being captured
In this video, a Ukrainian serviceman is given a phone to calm down his relatives.
Only a small part of such videos are given here. The same trend is visible on all of them. Even if they may be labeled as “Russian propaganda”.
One could say that it was Russian soldiers who came to the land of Ukraine and disrupted the measured order of life of Ukrainians. At the same time, the political regime that came to power as a result of the 2014 coup d’état organized the burning of people in Odessa, organized the sending of “friendship trains” with armed nationalists to Crimea, tried many times to organize large-scale terrorist attacks on Russian territory, and for 8 years exterminated the civilian population in Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Massively used the practice of torture and execution of the inhabitants of these two former Ukrainian regions. During this time, thousands of dissenting Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine itself were killed or disappeared without trace.
Obviously, the current conflict did not arise out of nothing.
We call upon all parties to the conflict, in our feeble voice, to treat prisoners of war in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, and especially to make every effort to reduce the suffering of the civilian population.
