Wow the sheer lack of self-recognition in this guy... Dude, you ARE the Nazi that you pretend to be fighting against. It doesn't matter if you're American or Russian, you 'proud boys' are all the same.
Yes, American soldiers would never do such things. They are distributing bananas and chocolate during war times to POW, have a lot of occasions to do so during the last decades.
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?
During the battle of Mariupol, after cornering Azov (the hardcore Nazi unit) in the metalworking plant, the Russian forces offered them literally like a dozen chances to surrender. To the extent that the Russian public was getting seriously angry about it! The Azov commanders wouldn't give in*!
*They surrendered just days later
And how did the Ukrainians react to this?
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.
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.
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.
Assume true. What would Putin say or do to this soldier if they were to meet? Publicly? Privately?
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.