GENEVA (AP) — With the evacuation of some civilians From a steel factory besieged by Russian forces in the port of Mariupol, attention turns to the fate of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers still inside after weeks in the plant’s labyrinth of underground tunnels and bunkers.
Counting both the healthy and the wounded among their ranks, their choice seems to be to fight to the death or surrender in the hope of saving themselves under the terms of international humanitarian law. But experts say the troops are unlikely to have an easy way out and may struggle to make it out free men or even alive.
“They have the right to fight to the death, but if they surrender to Russia, they can be stopped,” said Marco Sassoli, a professor of international law at the University of Geneva. “It’s just their choice.”
Laurie Blank, a professor at Emory Law School in Atlanta who specializes in international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict, said wounded combatants are considered “knocked out of action,” literally “knocked out of action,” and can be detained as prisoners of war. .
“Russia could allow wounded Ukrainian troops to return to Ukrainian areas, but it is not obliged to do so,” he said.
The sprawling Azovstal mill by the sea is a key war targeted by Russian forces as the last bastion of resistance on Ukraine’s southeast coast, after a grueling and devastating siege of Mariupol.
The wives of at least two Ukrainian soldiers inside Azovstal have been in Rome pleading with the international community to evacuate the soldiers there, arguing that they deserve the same rights as civilians.
Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband, Denys Prokopenko, commands the Azov Regiment at the plant, told The Associated Press that she had not heard from him for more than 36 hours before she finally heard from him on Wednesday.
He told him that Russian soldiers had entered Azovstal and “our soldiers are fighting, it’s crazy and hard to describe.”
“We don’t want them to die, they won’t give up,” said Kateryna Prokopenko. “They are waiting for the bravest countries to evacuate them. We will not let this tragedy happen after this long lockdown.”
“We have to evacuate our men as well.”
The Ukrainian authorities have also demanded that Russia offer the Azovstal soldiers a safe exit, with their weapons.
But experts say it would be almost unprecedented if they were simply allowed to walk freely, not least because they could take up arms again and possibly inflict Russian casualties.
“Russia is unlikely to allow Ukrainian troops to leave the plant with their weapons and nothing in the law requires it,” Blank said by email.
Instead, the Russian military has called on troops inside Azovstal to lay down their arms and come out with white flags. He says that those who surrender will not be killed, according to international law.
However, Ukrainian resistance commanders at the plant have repeatedly rebuffed him. In a video recording from the plant, Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, said his forces were “exhausted” but vowed “we have to hold the line.”
Should the Azovstal fighters be taken captive, it is unclear whether Russia would uphold its commitments under international law regarding prisoners of war, given its previous alleged violations of the rules governing the conduct of war and failure to evidence on how he has been treating Ukrainian soldiers. He already has it in custody.
International humanitarian law “grants prisoners of war absolute protection against ill-treatment and murder. Violations of these norms are war crimes,” said Annyssa Bellal, senior researcher and expert on international humanitarian law at the Geneva Graduate Institute. “Respect for the rules, however, depends on the will of the parties to the conflict.”
Both sides have allegedly violated international norms during two and a half months of war, as seen in evidence of execution-style killings of civilians that emerged following Russian withdrawals near kyiv, and the desecration of corpses that may have been troops. Russians out of Kharkiv. .
Protections for prisoners of war go back generations, including the 1863 Lieber Code, which was drafted during the US Civil War. Moscow itself benefited significantly from such rules during World War II, when Nazi forces they applied them on occasion with respect to Russian detainees.
Under the Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war “must be treated humanely at all times” and may not be “subjected to physical mutilation or medical or scientific experiments” that are not justified on health grounds. Members of the armed forces who are wounded or ill, meanwhile, “will be respected and protected in all circumstances.”
Unlike civilians, prisoners of war may be forcibly sent to other countries to prevent them from returning from the battlefield.
A 2016 Geneva Conventions interpretive document says that the medical treatment of prisoners of war is essential and that “the person of the wounded or sick soldier, and who is therefore hors de combat, is inviolable from that moment.”
However, there are differences of interpretation about whether wounded fighters may be the target of the war, said Sassoli, who was on a three-person team commissioned by the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe that traveled to Ukraine in March.
The International Committee of the Red Cross plays a crucial and almost exclusive role in conflicts around the world, mediating between combatants on issues such as organizing prisoner exchanges and monitoring the conditions of detainees. Among other things, the ICRC collects names of prisoners of war and informs their governments and families.
However, the ICRC has not said whether it has met any prisoners of war in Russian custody since the war began on February 24, a silence that Sassoli said could be a “bad sign”.
Asked by the AP if the ICRC has visited any detainees of war, spokesman Jason Straziuso said briefly: “The issue of prisoners of war is extremely important and we are working closely with the parties to the conflict on the issue.” He declined to comment further.
On Tuesday, Pascal Hundt, the ICRC’s head in Ukraine, told reporters that only civilians were included in a Russian-Ukrainian deal that led to the recent evacuations from Azovstal. And he expressed uncertainty that someone else might come out.
“The ICRC has little influence when it comes to reaching a ceasefire agreement, and it is up to the parties to reach an agreement and get these people out,” Hundt said. “We’ll keep pushing even if the hope is almost nil, we’ll just keep pushing, and we’re ready to get there.”
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Trisha Thomas in Rome contributed to this report.
Reference-apnews.com