Kremlin propaganda convinces troops they will be tortured if taken prisoner, says Ukrainian commander
Russia is afraid that Ukraine will treat their soldiers who are POW better than they treat their own soldiers. Better tell them to kill themselves otherwise they will realize how full of shit the Kremlin is.
exactly
"NEVER SURRENDER!!!" (so that you don't all realize you can and absolutely should)
Isn't that standard procedure in pretty much every military?
No, it is not.
I've never heard of a military that allows surrender on personal initiative. Modern or ancient.
You're gonna have to come up with some extraordinary evidence to back up that extraordinary claim.
The Geneva Conventions have entered the chat
and then realizing it is irrelevant, it backs away slowly
It literally dictates the rules of war, including how to treat POW.
How is that irrelevant?
The Canadian forces has a unit on rules of war. They're very particular about it. Contrary to belief, they're more than suggestions.
Because it says nothing about what POWs are required to do before being captured.
The Geneva convention would be relevant in this case if Ukrainian soldiers were killing Russian POWs.
Russian soldiers 'blow themselves up' to avoid capture
Isn't that standard procedure in pretty much every military?
I've never heard of a military that allows surrender on personal initiative. Modern or ancient.
I'm trying to pinpoint exactly when and why the conversation shifted from "normalcy of suicide" to "military regulations".
Because we are describing suicide in the context of avoiding capture. Which from a purely strategic perspective, is the correct course of action.
I recall an article from the first NK troop deployments where they interviewed a Ukrainian veteran, and he called the north koreans motivated and competent infantry. He specifically pointed out that they are very capable and very disciplined, and used their apparent willingness to commit suicide to avoid capture as evidence of said discipline.
Now if this article was talking about general suicide rates, then it would not have any relation to military doctrine.
And see: crediting your enemy with the discipline to commit suicide to avoid capture suggests to me that it is "remarkable". One might even say "atypical".
Does that same logic apply to marksmanship, training, and apparent endurance? Note that this article came out shortly after the speculation claiming the upcoming deployment from NK would be starving dudes with bamboo spears. Seemed to me more as a recognition of general competence.
Unfortunately, my attempts to find said article again have been stymied by a slew of recent articles talking about North Korea having an official suicide before capture policy. Would have been published mid-late 2024, a month or two after the original 50k deployment.
Yeah. It needs a solid 'I've never heard of' level of evidence.
...you want me to prove a negative?
It would be very easy to, for example, find a single military doctrine that outlines lawful surrender on personal initiative. If that existed.
Have you heard of the teapot orbiting Jupiter?
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/33/section/2/enacted?wrap=true&view=plain
A person subject to military law shall be guilty of an offence against this section if, without lawful excuse, he
(a)surrenders any place or thing to the enemy
Any member of the armed forces who before or in the presence of the enemy—
(1) runs away;
(2) shamefully abandons, surrenders, or delivers up any command, unit, place, or military property which it is his duty to defend;
Yeah, I see that type of thing a lot.
What I don't see very often is what exactly consistitutes a "lawful excuse" in the context of surrender, apart from direct order from superiors. So we go back to my original point: no surrender on personal initiative is allowed.
Which makes sense. Captured soldiers are a political liability. That's why some militaries (Israel) go as far as to declare that captured friendlies should be killed.
I'm not sure where you are from but UK uses the system of common law. Rather than list every reason why x y z can be or cannot be done it sets rules that are interpreted by a judge or court. With the exception of statutory rules like speeding where there is no excuse and the rule is 50mph etc.
https://www.lloydlawcollege.edu.in/blog/civil-law-vs-common-law.html
Okay. So, is there a common law ruling that you can point to which defines acceptable conditions for surrender on personal initiative? Otherwise, the distinction between common law and civil law is irrelevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Lonsdale
He was forced to surrender his boat in World War II [...] In 1946, he was court-martialed for the loss of the submarine and was honourably acquitted.
But every case can be different, that's the whole point. A standard or rule is set and the circumstances of each event are evaluated. Later events can refer to earlier rulings.
"Safety of personnel should be your first consideration after destruction of Asdics"
I think this counts as a superior ordering him to surrender given the context. Almost certainly played in his favor. Still got the discharge for it.
While I was not particularly clear before, I was primarily referring to enlisted infantry surrendering. Officers, especially those faced with annihilation of their command, likely have a lot more rights to order a surrender when there is no meaningful ability to continue fighting.
Edit: This, again, goes back to the politics of surrender. An official policy of death before surrender would likely crater morale and recruitment efforts, but a captured soldier is potent political leverage. So while no militaries to my knowledge (knowledge updated, some do, see edit2) have a stated no surrender policy (even Stalin's famous "no steps back" quote is so stripped of context that is is pretty much propaganda), I also don't see any militaries with written policies describing proper surrender procedures. It's effectively a ban by omission.
Edit2: appreciate the link, btw. I have done some more reading. While I still stand by my original position, described in the edit, I have learned that some military forces worldwide do have an official policy of suicide before surrender in modern times. I kinda figured that died out in the 40s.
He didn't receive the message lol. As far as he knew he was not given the order to surrender.
"Understood and agreed with. Best of luck. Well done", followed by "Safety of personnel should be your first consideration after destruction of Asdics". These were not received because the ciphers had been destroyed
Correct, he did not receive the order. But the order was given, and like I said, I expect that the court martial would have gone a different way if that last order read "surrender is not an option".
That's right, he surrendered using his own initiative.
Yes, and plenty of soldiers do. Many of them are then shot for cowardice.
Now, did he surrender thinking "This is clearly legitimate and I will not face serious penalties" or did he surrender thinking "Either we all die to the Germans, or I am found guilty of cowardice and executed, but at least my men will live"? This is not a question we can really answer, unless the dude did some writing on the topic which I am unaware of.
While digging further, I have not found any examples of stare decisis resulting from this decision. However, I did find that military courts in the UK do not follow common law. So that may be a fool's errand.
Either way, I don't find the idea of soldiers dying rather than surrendering particularly far-fetched. Although, based on previous conflicts, countries that carry out more executions for surrender/desertions/cowardice tend to be the ones that lose wars. Like I said earlier, not great for morale.
I'd hazard a guess individuals being punished for surrender was not a common theme since WW1, at least for the allies.
Cowardice on the other hand was an issue. Do you have some data to backup your claims on the losing side executing more people?
Ya know I was thinking about it some more, and I wonder how this ties in with Umberto Eco's 11th point. "Heroic" death on the battlefield.
I found this: https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=222008 claiming around 15k germans executed for desertion. Disclaimer: I am VERY skeptical of any forums that focus on axis military history. Same reason that I'm EXTREMELY skeptical of dudes that are "really into history" but only WWII and the roman empire. However, the books they mention do in fact exist.
Whenever I search for allies executing soldiers for desertion, I get a shitload of articles about Eddie Slovak, and that is making it difficult to find specific numbers for other allied nations. Similarly, the focus on the wehrmacht makes it difficult to find exact numbers for Italy and Japan, although Japan had the shattered jewel policy.
Basically I'm extrapolating from the magnitude of those numbers. Although, WWI numbers do seem to show the opposite--More british and french soldiers executed than germans. That being said, the official count of 49 german executions seems. Undercounted.
Rules:
No sympathy with the enemy or its collaborators. Russian and North Korean soldiers are fascists committing a genocide. Remember that.
Objective and factual reporting from the battlefield, parliaments, etc. is encouraged, even if it's about bad news for Ukraine.
Insulting Putin and his cronies (Orban, Trump, Musk,...) is absolutely fine but don't use homophobic or similar language against them. Members of the queer community don't deserve to be compared to that scum. Also: Putin disciminates against gay people. If you do as well, you're part of the problem.
Don't insult or use overly harsh language against other commentators.
Don't submit direct links to Twitter/X and Truth Social posts. You may: Post a screenshot + quote, do a full quote and name the author, direct link to a proxy service like ThreadReaderApp.com or Nitter, deep link an image embedded in a tweet because Lemmy will cache a copy.
Don't just complain about paywalls. If you encounter one, be a sport and link to an archived version instead. Use Firefox + Cookie AutoDelete + uBlock Origin with the annoyances filters enabled and https://filterlists.com/lists/bypass-paywalls-clean-filter to avoid encountering many in the first place.