Talking about war crimes (warning highly politicial and ethically questionable issues)

[noname223]

I read several news articles today about war crimes.They are very condemnable and shocking because they are crimes against humanity. I was surprised to read (maybe I was too naive) there are also war crimes committed by Ukraine. In my opinion they are way less evil than the Russian war crimes but they are also violating the geneva convention (or other contracts but they are war crimes.)
Maybe this thread will start a war I rather should deliver some proofs. My original sources for that are two German news articles which won't be a help for most people in this forum. I cannot find an English one about it.
Here it is even behind a paywall...
https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/krie...oennen-a-e3986452-355c-4c18-ad10-0004f6bcda7d

I want to emphasizze that Russia is the aggressor in this war. Especially the murderous Putin with his warlords. There is the Wagner group which is allied with Putin. They have the Nazi SS as role model. It is quite cynical that Putin is the one who calls the Ukrainian government Nazis when he is allied with them. There is a wikipedia article about them if you don't believe me.

Now to the Ukrainian war crimes. I find them rather harmless compared to the Russian war crimes. Putin is a fucking monster. He bombs civilians for example in schools, hospitals or even humanitarian corridors. This is really despicable but it is his war strategy in order to demoralize the Ukrainian people. Disgusting.
The Ukrainians make the following. They force Russian soldiers to take part in press conferences where they have to condemn the war against Ukraine. I read they are forced to call their parents and cry to stop the war. And these videos are then broadcasted. Seemingly this is a war crime according to some contracts. Soliders should not be instrumentalized in such a way. They have to be treated with dignity when they are in war captivity and this seemingly violates their dignity.

To be honest I don't know what I shall think about this. I have mixed feelings about it. But I think this thread might be explosive....this is why the warning.
I don't think these "war crimes" are extremely horrible compared to the Russian ones. If I was Ukraine I might behave in the exact same way. On the other side a war crime keeps a war crime. It is really important that those rules are followed. Otherwise war becomes even more barbaric. Now the other highly complicated question. Do I have to follow these rules despite the fact my enemy violates them? I would say yes. But war in general is ethically highly problematic. But being a pacifist won't have any benefit. You rather end up tortured in the gulag as a pacifist.

What do you think about the Ukrainian "war crimes"? Do you think this behavior should count as a war crime? How condemnable do you find it?
I like ethical debates this is why this thread might be interesting for me. However they are sometimes quite heated.

 

[GrumpyFrog]

I don't think that there are any examples of wars where both sides always followed Geneva conventions. You cannot give war a pretty face and keep it civilized. It is barbaric by definition. Ukrainian army isn't somehow automatically better than Russian - it has a more justifyable cause and maybe a higher percentage of participants that are not morally reprehensible for that simple reason. But there are always complete monsters on all sides of all armed conflicts ever, unfortunately. I'm sure there are Ukrainian soldiers out there that are doing worse things that what you described. Because this is simply how war is. And it will probably get worse. Once the line of war crimes was crossed by one side of the conflict, it's done, all rules will inevitably go out of the window.
In theory, you should stick to the rules even if your enemy violates them. In practice, this is horror of hegemonic proportions. Just imagine how you would feel if you knew that every single person you ever cared about can be killed horribly for no real reason literally any minute, imagine living with this knowledge day after day...and then imagine seeing the person that came to your hometown with the explicit purpose of killing people like you and everyone you care about. How many people would give a shit about that person's wellbeing and dignity, even if they are supposed to? Cruelty breeds more hatred and cruelty that breeds more hatred and cruelty that breeds more hatred and cruelty...and this doesn't stop until one of the sides is bled dry and gives up. There is no way up, unfortunately, in theory there should be but not in practice.
Ukrainian army is not some magic fairy army of democracy and freedom - it consists of human beings, some kind and some cruel and all incredibly hurt and terrified, worse and worse with each passing day. War dehumanizes "the enemy" for both sides. That is incredibly tragic. The most tragic thing I can imagine.

TLDR: All war crimes are wrong, but there is no war that is "right". It will get worse. Much worse.

 

[Depressed Cat]

Poo-tin is solely responsible for this diabolical war on humanity. He is directly responsible for the war crimes his foot soldiers are committing in Ukraine.

I saw a bone-chilling video of Poo-tin's uniformed thugs in a tank running over a civilian car and crushing those in the car. I listened to audio intercepts of Russian war criminals calling home, describing casually how the scum occupied a shopping centre and looted stuff, raped women, rounded the civilians to a nearby field and executed them in cold blood. These are heinous crimes against humanity, along with the deliberate shelling & rocket attacks on hospitals, orphanages, schools and monuments.

Poo-tin is not new to committing genocide and heinous crimes against humanity. He started this in Chechnya even before he became President of the Russian mafiocracy. He repeated it in Syria again. He did it in Ukraine before this as well, when his terrorist horde in the Donbass shot down Malaysian passenger plane MH17 killing all those on board.

This is what the Soviet army did in WW II throughout Eastern Europe on the territories they occupied from the retreating Germans. Soviet war crimes far exceeded the war crimes committed by the Germans. The Soviet savages wiped out the entire political, military and bureaucratic leadership of Poland in the Katyn forest massacre. This is exactly what Poo-tin and his Russian mafiocratic scum want to do in Ukraine now. Kadyrov's Chechen pigs and the rabid mercenary dogs of the Wagner Group have been sent into Ukraine with the same goal in mind.

The politicians who still want to appease Poo-tin are a disgrace to humankind. The foreign companies still doing business in Poo-tin's Russia and Lukashenko's Belarus are detestable entities.

There is only one endgame to this war on humanity unleashed by Poo-tin. That is the well-deserved and long overdue collapse and overthrow of the rogue regimes of the diabolical dictators of Russia and Belarus!

 

[Lost Magic]

This is what a high ranking general had to say about it: