Prisoners of war – in Russia and Ukraine

 By Evgeny Glebov

Prisoners of war are usually treated according to rank. Officers get better treatment. They can be used as camp supervisors. They can refuse to work at all. But other ranks often end up doing heavy, and sometimes meaningless jobs, poorly fed and treated quite cruelly. The Nazis and the Japanese militarists even carried out hideous experiments on them.

POWs have, however, long been treated differently in Russia. In the 18th century Peter the Great set new standards. The Czar understood that they would have to be sent home when war ended . On his orders prisoners were well kept and paid the going rate for their work. Many retained fond memories of their days in captivity.

It was the same in Soviet times. For example, there was a separate Main Directorate for Internees and Prisoners of War within the interior ministry (the NKVD) the GUIVP, and not the Gulag. The food standards in the GUIVP were higher than in the Gulag, set at the level of the norms for Soviet workers.

Prisoners of war had to work but they could choose their own foremen. At first, of course, the officers were the foremen, but gradually life put everyone in their place. If an officer could only command, and not really lead the team, then he was soon replaced.

Ordinary soldiers retained many kind memories of Soviet captivity. But Wehrmacht and the Japanese officers didn’t like being treated the same as other ranks and obliged to engage in productive work. One of the few exceptions was Konrad Lorenz, a well-known zoologist and Nobel Prize winner. He was a doctor and in captivity he learned a lot from Russian colleagues. He praised the Russian captivity very much.

The same cannot be said about the Ukrainians. They treat their Russian POWs in the traditional Western way. The Russians are held in very harsh conditions. Many are bullied, mutilated and tortured.

Ukrainians in Russian captivity are kept according to the usual norms of prisoners in Russia. The food , treatment and the absence of abuse comes as a pleasant surprise to them.

Many Russian citizens are surprised by the ongoing exchange of prisoners during the conflict. POWs are usually freed after a truce and after former enemy soldiers at least partially make amends for their crimes.

Now it is happening during in the course of hostilities. War criminals have a completely different attitude than ordinary prisoners of war. And they very often do not even have time to acknowledge their guilt for participating in the crimes of their regime.

Moreover, the Ukrainian side wants only to exchange officers and stubborn Nazis. They don’t care about ordinary soldiers.

It is quite possible that the Ukrainian side is deliberately exploliting traditional Russian humanism for its own purposes. This is a typical psychology of criminals - to take kindness for weakness. But they do not understand that in the end they will have to answer for everything.

Russia sees the exchange of prisoners as a way to get our people out of trouble. But the Kiev military authorities are pursuing much more cunning goals. Zelensky refuses to exchange his wounded because they can no longer fight. He chooses only the healthy.

First, they demand the release of only physically fit prisoners to send them back to the front. Some have ended back in Russian POW camps two or three times over the past year.

What is interesting for a researcher, but angers me as a person is that they easily track the condition of prisoners of war on social networks. And most importantly, they very accurately seek the exchange of those who have retained their Nazi ideology in captivity.

We are forced to exchange these Nazi just to get our Russian POWs out. And as a result, quite motivated Nazis again lead the units of Ukrainians, who are sent to the meat grinder on the battle line. It seems that something needs to be changed in the ways of dealing with the Kiev military on prisoner exchanges…

MART