Opinion | The place Are the Ukrainian POWs?

Ms. Tolkachova belongs to the guardianship unit of the Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s Nationwide Guard, which has tended to troopers’ stays and their households for the previous eight years of warfare in Ukraine. “That is the primary time we’re confronted with such quite a lot of our bodies and customarily such a state of our bodies,” she says. “We principally can’t even decide what sort of accidents brought about their dying.” She worries about how one can spare households the “horrible psychological trauma” of seeing their family members’ ravaged stays. “We can be attempting to speak mother and father out of inspecting the our bodies themselves and suggesting that the identification be finished by the use of DNA evaluation.”

Bleak because the scene was, it sparked hope for the households of some 2,500 troopers who survived the siege of Mariupol. Kyiv and Moscow brokered an change of troops killed in motion, and households hope Russia will commerce captives subsequent.

Russian Protection Minister

Sergei Shoigu

not too long ago mentioned Russia had taken practically 6,500 Ukrainian troopers prisoner since February, Voice of America reported. Ukraine mentioned in early April that it held some 600 Russian POWs. The Ukrainian authorities is tight-lipped about negotiations for prisoner exchanges, and the households of Mariupol’s defenders say they don’t know the way Russia has handled their family members. However Ukrainian human-rights activists say Russia routinely tortures prisoners of warfare, deprives them of requirements, and holds them in deplorable situations.

Mariupol’s defenders included the Azov Regiment, a lot of whose members Ms. Tolkachova knew, and the thirty sixth Marine Brigade. After enduring weeks of siege and brutal assault, the Ukrainian troopers laid down their arms in hope of saving lives. Many civilians have been efficiently evacuated from the Ukrainian troopers’ final stronghold within the metropolis.

Bohdan Krotevych,

the Azov Regiment’s 29-year-old chief of employees, mentioned final month that the Ukrainians proposed that Russia would obtain their severely wounded troopers and launch them in a prisoner change.

The Russians mentioned no—“both everybody or nobody” must give up, Mr. Krotevych instructed me by textual content message on Might 18. “So we have been confronted with a really robust alternative. . . . These with critical wounds have been principally rotting away and slowly dying in our hospitals, whereas the enemy was robbing the humanitarian convoys with drugs.” By Might 20 he had stopped responding to messages, and the press reported the troopers’ give up.

In the course of the siege of Mariupol, “we have been residing from one textual content message to a different,” says

Tetiana Kharko,

32, whose brother,

Serhii Volynskyi,

is a 30-year-old marine commander. He’s an adoring father, and his household has had no phrase of him since he was taken prisoner. “There are not any resets” for his or her accumulating fear, Ms. Kharko says.

“The one consolation is they’re not beneath direct risk of dying from fight,” says

Mariia Netreba,

24. Her husband, Mykola, is a quiet military-history buff who made her espresso every morning earlier than the invasion. Mrs. Netreba and her husband are from Mariupol, and he or she says she wept for 2 weeks straight over the lack of her residence and what destiny awaits Mykola as a prisoner of warfare.

One other captive is

Denys Prokopenko,

30, commander of the Azov Regiment. In late April, Mr. Krotevych described him to me as “the linchpin on which the entire protection of Mariupol and the morale of all Azov servicepeople rests.” His spouse, Kateryna, 27, wears a marriage band etched with mountains; she proudly remembers how she as soon as beat her athletic husband’s snowboarding pace document and the way he proposed to her on a backpacking journey in Norway.

Somebody leaked Mrs. Prokopenko’s contact data on the Russian internet, and he or she now receives menacing calls each day. She doesn’t dare change her quantity, and he or she solutions each time: “I get this sense that my husband might be calling me from an unknown quantity.” Requested how she’s holding up, she stiffens her jaw and says Denys’s “energy has rubbed off on me a bit.”

Russia is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, which enumerate the rights of prisoners of warfare, together with humane therapy, entry to medical care and safety from acts of violence, intimidation, insult, public curiosity and reprisal. Troopers could be prosecuted for warfare crimes, however not merely for participating in fight.

Mrs. Prokopenko says {that a} situation of give up was that the Worldwide Committee of the Purple Cross would monitor the standing of the Mariupol prisoners, but it surely hasn’t. “The issue with the Purple Cross is they’re at all times politically impartial,” she says. “All we hear are common phrases after we ask why there isn’t a monitoring there.”

Mirella Hodeib,

a communications coordinator for the Worldwide Committee of the Purple Cross, mentioned by e-mail that “visits to prisoners of warfare on all sides in latest months have allowed the ICRC to tell a whole bunch of households about their family members. Many extra households want solutions.” The Purple Cross declined to supply details about “particular instances or the general situations or therapy” or the variety of POWs.

The Mariupol prisoners of warfare could also be particularly weak as a result of they embody members of the Azov Regiment. When Russia started its aggression towards Ukraine in 2014, the Western press reported that this unit included members who espoused neo-Nazi ideology. This spring Mr. Krotevych acknowledged there had been “some people who maintain Nazi views” however mentioned the unit had dishonorably discharged them.

Russian propagandists proceed to repeat

Vladimir Putin’s

declare that he’s “de-Nazifying” Ukraine.

Leonid Slutsky,

a deputy of the Russian Duma, not too long ago instructed officers ought to “think twice” about imposing the dying penalty on prisoners from the Azov Regiment: “They don’t should stay.”

Some Russian lawmakers and commentators have known as for the Mariupol defenders to be placed on trial. Russian media has reported that Russia’s Ministry of Justice has sought to declare the Azov Regiment a terrorist group. “Nazi criminals shouldn’t be exchanged,” State Duma Chairman

Vyacheslav Volodin

mentioned final month. “Our place ought to be unchanged: These are warfare criminals and we should do all the things in order that they stand trial.”

Final week a court docket within the Russian-controlled territory of Donetsk delivered dying sentences for 2 Britons and one Moroccan who had fought with Ukrainian forces round Mariupol. U.Ok. Overseas Secretary

Liz Truss

characterised the defendants as prisoners of warfare and denounced the “sham judgment with completely no legitimacy.” The troopers of Mariupol are susceptible to comparable present trials.

The perils don’t finish there. “The folks captured by Russia are in lethal threat as a result of they are often raped, tortured, overwhelmed, injured, killed,” says

Oleksandra Matviichuk,

head of the Kyiv-based Heart for Civil Liberties, a human-rights nonprofit.

Russia has additionally captured civilians, together with human-rights activists, politicians and journalists. It occupies an estimated 20% of Ukrainian territory. “They wish to use these folks as a bargaining chip” for political concessions, says

Olha Reshetylova,

co-founder of the Media Initiative for Human Rights, a Ukrainian nongovernmental group. Russia additionally desires to “destabilize the political state of affairs” in Ukraine by utilizing prisoner exchanges to pit the pursuits of the households of captives towards these of the victims of Russian warfare crimes. The Geneva Conventions embody sweeping protections for civilians, together with a prohibition on taking hostages.

If Russia violates the legal guidelines of warfare, Ukrainians and their supporters could surprise if a negotiated settlement of the battle could be well worth the paper it’s printed on.

Ms. Melchior is a Journal editorial web page author.