crosspostato da: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/38863207
Russian soldier Mikhail Surikov signed a contract with the Russian military “out of foolishness.” In a video filmed while he was held captive as a prisoner of war in Ukraine in November 2023, he said he had enlisted because he “needed money.”
"They sent us here to die,” Surikov, a former locksmith for an oil company, said of the Russian army. It was not possible to determine whether his comments were made under duress.
When asked a year later about what would happen to him if he were freed in a prisoner exchange, Surikov said his Russian commanders would send him back to the battlefield.
Surikov, 49, appears to have been exchanged in a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine last year. He was later killed at the front.
[…]
The two sides [Ukraine and Russia] held their eighth round of prisoner exchanges.
These swaps came amid reports that Moscow is sending former prisoners of war exchanged by Kyiv back into combat — a move that violates the Geneva Convention on POWs, which states that former prisoners cannot be employed on active military service.
As in the case of Surikov, some families have published video appeals asking Russian authorities not to send their formerly captive relatives back to the front after an exchange.
“I want to address Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin…with a request not to send former POWs back to the war zone,” said Marina Frolova, whose husband, Alexei Frolov, has been held as a POW in Ukraine for more than a year.
[…]
Kirill Putinsev, 23, who was recruited to fight in 2024 while serving a prison sentence for theft, returned to Russia after a swap in May 2025 — but he “wasn’t even allowed to go home for a single day” and was “denied even a referral to a military medical commission,” his sister Yana claimed.
After suffering a nervous breakdown, Putinsev was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Russian-occupied Donetsk, his sister said.
In the Pskov region, Vasily Grigoryev, 32, and Dmitry Davydov, 45, were drafted into the 1009th Motorized Rifle Regiment following Russia’s September 2022 mobilization. They were later sent to fight in Ukraine, where they spent over six months in Ukrainian captivity.
After being released in a 195-for-195 prisoner swap, Russian commanders redeployed them to the Kharkiv front where they were tasked with evacuating the wounded and the dead. The two men eventually escaped from their military base and hitchhiked to Moscow, where they sought legal assistance.
[…]
It is impossible to estimate how many former Russian prisoners of war have been sent back to the front by order of Moscow, as official lists of those who have been exchanged and those currently serving in the Russian army are not publicly available.
Last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law that exempts former prisoners of war from mobilization.
[…]
One Day, i just scroll through the Geneva convention and see if there’s anything the Russians haven’t violated yet.
Is there anything in the Geneva convention that prohibits redeploying your own soldiers after you got them out of being POWs?
Article 117 says:
No repatriated person may be employed on active military service.
However, I personally don’t know if this actually applies to the case here, because it says “repatriated” and not “released”. At first glance, it reads to me that a POW may not be employed on active military service by either the country that captured them, or a neutral other party.EDIT: It looks as if Article 117 does indeed disallow a released POW to be re-deployed to active military duty by ANY party, including the army, the soldier/POW is part of:
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciii-1949/article-117/commentary/2020
Thank you. I didnt expect such a rule. I only expected that POWs must not be forced to fight against their own people
I didnt expect such a rule
Honestly, neither did I. I assumed that re-deploying returned POW would not be an issue, at least legally, but could obviously be a bad move due to trauma, or some injuries.
Interesting thath this article does only apply to the same conflict, a released POW may be re-deployed to a different war, both present and future.
They treat it like a checklist
What do they expect - Russian soldiers are cannon fodder. These prisoner swaps are ONLY done for this purpose
