MAY 5, 2022
Easy out from steel mill seen as unlikely for Ukraine troops | AP News
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“They have the right to fight until they are dead, but if they surrender to Russia, they can be detained,” said Marco Sassoli, a professor of international law at the University of Geneva. “It’s simply their choice.”
Laurie Blank, a professor at Emory Law School in Atlanta who specializes in international humanitarian law and law of armed conflict, said injured fighters are considered “hors de combat” — literally “out of the fight” — and can be detained as prisoners of war.
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The wives of at least two Ukrainian soldiers inside Azovstal have been in Rome pleading with the international community for an evacuation of the soldiers there, arguing they deserve the same rights as civilians.
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“We don’t want them to die, they won’t surrender,” Kateryna Prokopenko said. “They are waiting for the bravest countries to evacuate them. We won’t let this tragedy happen after this long blockade.”
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Ukrainian authorities have also demanded that Russia offer the Azovstal soldiers a safe exit — with their arms.
But experts say it would be nearly unprecedented for them to be simply allowed to walk free, not least because they could take up arms again and possibly cause Russian casualties.
“It is unlikely that Russia would allow Ukrainian troops to leave the plant with their weapons and nothing in the law would require that,” Blank said via email.
Instead the Russian military has called on the troops inside Azovstal to lay down their weapons and come out with white flags. It says those who surrender will not be killed, in line with international law.
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In the event the Azovstal fighters were to be taken captive, it’s not clear whether Russia would uphold its commitments under international law regarding POWs, given its alleged previous violations of rules governing war conduct and a lack of evidence for how it has been treating Ukrainian soldiers it already has in custody.
International humanitarian law “grants absolute protection to POWs against ill treatment and murder. Violations of these norms are war crimes,” said Annyssa Bellal, senior researcher and international humanitarian law expert at the Geneva Graduate Institute. “The respect of the norms, though, is dependent on the will of the parties to the conflict.”
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Under the Geneva Conventions, POWs “must at all times be humanely treated” and may not be “subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments” that aren’t justified for health reasons. Members of armed forces who are wounded or sick, meanwhile, “shall be respected and protected in all circumstances.”
Unlike civilians, prisoners of war may be forcibly sent to other countries in order to keep them from returning from the battlefield.
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The International Committee of the Red Cross plays a crucial and nearly exclusive role in conflicts around the world mediating between combatants on matters such as arranging prisoner swaps and monitoring detainee conditions. Among other things, the ICRC collects names of POWs and reports back to their governments and families.
Yet the ICRC has not said whether it has met with any POWs in Russian custody since the war began Feb. 24, a silence that Sassoli said could be a “bad sign.”
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On Tuesday, Pascal Hundt, the ICRC’s chief in Ukraine, told reporters that only civilians were covered in a Russian-Ukrainian deal that led to the recent evacuations from Azovstal. And he expressed uncertainty that anyone else might get out.
“The ICRC has little leverage when it comes to reaching a cease-fire agreement, and it is up to the parties to find agreement and to get these people out,” Hundt said. “We’ll continue to push even if the hope is close to zero, we’ll just continue to push — and we stand ready to go there.”
