Originally Posted by
Mihalik
One can judge a society by how said society treats it's prisoners.
This applies here too.
Could we stop calling for wholesale murder? On either side?
If Russian troops are killed in active combat, I shed no tears for them, but if they want to surrender that surrender must be accepted.
The Russians have done plenty of warcrimes, but there seems to be no evidence of them murdering wholesale surrendering Ukrainian troops. There seem to have been individual torture and murder cases, but generally they don't seem to be filling mass graves with surrendering Ukrainians.
Think of the Ukrainians who held out in Mariupol for example.
Yes, Russia is a terrorist state, but they seem to exercise some degree of civility.
And the thing is, even if they didn't, even if they'd be full genocidal maniacs, two wrongs don't make a right.
Also as an absolute final point, to horribly butcher Sun Tzu "Always give your enemy a golden bridge to retreat on".
In this case that bridge is the knowledge for Russian soldiers that they can just go "Fuck this" and surrender safely to the Ukrainians. Which will both moderate how they treat the Ukrainian civilians as you don't want to get prosecuted for war crimes and will moderate their willingness to fight. No heroic fight to the last man bullshit needed, just surrender and spend the rest of the war safe behind lines with 3 meals a day and you get to go home when it's all over.