"Ukrainian Prisoners Of War Paraded In Rebel ..." Topic

…Controlled Donetsk.

"* Around 80 soldiers were tied, slapped and doused in water in eastern city
* Donetsk remains in rebels' grip despite pressure from Kiev-controlled forces
* Ukraine's President has pledged another £1.80 GBPbillion to fight the separatists

Pro-Moscow rebels in Ukraine paraded dozens of prisoners of war through the streets today with shouts of 'Fascists! Fascists!' as the conflict plunged new depths.

Around 80 detained Kiev troops were marched through Donetsk followed by road-cleaning trucks spraying water to 'wash the streets of traces of the captives', said a separatist source.

The chilling scene along Artem Street to Lenin Square, a main thoroughfare, was a deliberate rerun of Stalin's display of 57,000 captured Nazi PoW officers and men in Moscow 70 years ago on 17 July 1944 during the Second World War…"
Full article here
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This is incredible. It would seem that we have not made ​​any progress as a civilization since the last World War.

Amicalement
Armand

What's this 'we'?

Some of us are civilised. Others choose not to be.

From the Moscow Times :

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It seems that many of them may not have been soldiers at all, but anyone the gunmen in control have chosen to arrest. There 'crime' may be as insignificant as riding a bicycle, or daring to express an opinion on a social media forum. The 'jeering crowd' is remarkably small as the rest stand by silently, suggesting that they may be more in fear of not being seen, and therefore under suspicion of collaboration, than in support.

It is a return to the darkest periods of history, where neighbour can have neighbour arrested by the mere suggestion that they may be harbouring such thoughts.

Is it a surprise that there are Serbs fighting there? Perhaps the same ones who perpetrated the massacres in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Lavrov says he has seen the footage of them bring paraded, while the crowd shouts fascists and throws bottles and "can see nothing humiliating there"

Perhaps he should try walking it himself and see how humiliated he feels?

In a tit-for-tat response, Russian troops just recently captured in Ukraine were shown on TV today too.

Apparently at least one Russian trooper commented that they were being used as cannon-fodder by Putin.

I suspect if his comments were not anonymous, his longevity will be rather short, should he be repatriated to the mother-country.

Also, apparently AP has confirmed Russian armor (10 x "tanks", plus a couple of other vehicles. Another report today mentioned infantry vehicles, so not sure if they are talking about the same group, or if one reporter misidentified them.) and troops entering SE Ukraine. Rumor has it they are now trying to secure a land-bridge to Crimea, as predicted a while back.

Lavrov is still trying to deny any Russians are in Ukraine, and one story-line is they got lost, and crossed the border in error.

The interviews were shown on TV. Not aware that they have been paraded through the streets while things are thrown at them…

Showing them being interviewed on TV is still a war crime, as they're being subjected to public curiosity.

However, I agree entirely that the two incidents are several orders of magnitude apart in terms of criminality. There is also the 'world opinion' aspect to consider, in that Ukraine might simply be accused of lying unless it shows the proof.

That said, as Russia and Ukraine are 'not' at war with each other (said with a straight face), it presumably cannot be a war crime to parade 'illegal immigrants' on tv. ;)

Showing them being interviewed on TV is still a war crime, as they're being subjected to public curiosity.

That seems subject to debate, in international law:
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Presumably Mr Lavrov would condone this and not consider this to be humiliating either – he didn't seem to think parading them through the street was humiliation in any way ;-)