You should not be sharing this, that is a war crime.
It’s a war crime to wear certain insignias or flags, or to falsely surrender or feign injury for the purpose of ambush… But really, what’s he supposed to do: “oh, sorry, this was a misunderstanding; please shoot me”? They’re in a defensive and illegal war against a belligerent that flagrantly disregards human rights and international law… Two wrongs don’t make a right or whatever but this is like a clerical error versus organized crime
Doesn’t seem like he surrendered. He had his weapon. Also, didn’t feign injury from what can be seen. The orcs just mistook him for an ally it appears. Is this really a war crime?
Depending on the full context this may be a legitimate ruse. He did not abuse protected insignia or actions as you said. This is why you have IFF protocols, and it’s at least partly on the Russians for being so credulous.
Russians have executed over 250 POWs. This is the worst situation to cry foul.
My apologies that “crying foul” over well established war crimes bothers you, but you’re not helping the Ukrainians by publicizing this.
What would you have done in his situation?
I agree with the basic idea that there ought to be rules of engagement, but you might be setting an unreasonably high standard. You know what happens to POWs in Russia. He was alone and outnumbered. At worst I would suppose he deserves a mild reprimand.
I said we shouldn’t be sharing this and that is exactly what I think.
So basically you might have done the same in his shoes, but it feels crappy to see everyone cheering at snuff films? That I would agree with.
And more importantly Ukraine doesn’t need bad optics like this. This doesn’t look good from the outside.
Neither does the fact that both sides have been using cluster bombs since the onset of the war, but nobody’s talking about it anymore.
I wish we could return to the age of limited warfare. Small armies, pitched battles, limited engagements. But it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle, isn’t it?
It’s been publicized, posted, and shared over a million times since it was originally uploaded two days ago.
