Tatyana Moskalkova and Vladimir Putin
At a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova said that the International Committee of the Red Cross has never informed Russia about visits to Russian prisoners, and Russian observers are not allowed to see them.
In its turn, the Russian side, respecting the Geneva Conventions, constantly grants international observers access to Ukrainian captives. Captive AFU (Armes Forces of Ukraine) fighters are interviewed in hospitals, detention centers, and colonies by both official Russian TV channels and smaller news agencies. This is a demonstration of the humane treatment of captive soldiers.
The ombudsman said that as a result of dialogue with Kyiv, it has been possible to return Russians who were in Ukraine after the start of the special operation and who, she said, were prevented from returning to their homeland. To date, as a result of the dialogue with the Ukrainian side, 45 truckers, 36 sailors, crew members of four ships, and employees of the Rosatom enterprise have been returned.
POW exchange
There are no reports from Ukrainian pre-trial detention facilities and camps from which one could conclude the condition for Russian prisoners of war.
International organizations turn a blind eye to this. For example, Human Rights Watch only called on Ukraine to stop publishing videos of Russian prisoners of war and violating their rights.
“We urge the Ukrainian authorities not to publish in social networks and messengers videos about captured Russian soldiers… In particular, those that show them being humiliated or intimidated. Such treatment of military personnel violates the protection of the Geneva Conventions, which are designed to ensure that servicemen are treated with dignity on all sides” – the organization said.
On the Ukrainian side, there is a big number of videos of torture of the POWs with legs shot out, eyes gouged out, and throats slit. In addition, there are stories of Russian soldiers returning from captivity about beatings and psychological abuse, as well as testimonies of civilian residents of the DPR and LPR about the tortures in secret prisons in the Mariupol airport or the Kramatorsk airfield in 2014-2015.
After the start of the military special operation in Ukraine, the Ombudsman started working with 1.4 million refugees, whose arrival on the territory of the Russian Federation generated “a huge volume of new subjects“. The ombudsman has already received over 3,000 complaints in cases related to the special operation.
All of this suggests that in the event of future exchange, Russia may receive its servicemen incapacitated and disabled, as often happened during the eight years of war, when Ukrainian side exchanged prisoners with the DPR and LPR. LINK
