A battlefield choice that once meant life over death is, for many Russian soldiers, turning into a different kind of sentence back home. The Wall Street Journal reports that Russian POWs who return from Ukrainian captivity are often met not with gratitude, but with suspicion, extensive FSB questioning, and in many cases, a one-way ticket back to the front. One middle-aged soldier who phoned home to say he'd survived captivity and hoped to be home for his son's birthday was instead questioned for weeks then re-deployed near Donetsk. His family doesn't know if he's alive or dead.
A 2022 law made voluntary surrender a crime; one soldier, Roman Ivanishin, received a 15-year sentence after returning in a prisoner swap on charges including surrender and desertion. Ex-POWs describe being stripped of firearms and returned to their units, where they are assigned cleaning, guard duty, or other low-level work; others say commanders sent them back into hazardous missions as punishment. Salaries and bonuses that lured many into service can be axed once they are listed as captured, leaving families in financial distress.
The reported treatment runs counter to the Geneva Conventions, which bar putting former POWs back into active combat; a Russian Defense Ministry document viewed by the Journal argues those rules don't fully apply since the war is ongoing. Some relatives now quietly hope their soldiers will be excluded from swaps and remain in Ukrainian camps. (Read the full story.)
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