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It's long been an article of the laws of warfare that if you caught someone fighting who wasn't in uniform, they weren't entitled to the protection of Prisoner of War status and can be executed summarily when captured.
Ukraine handed out a lot of genuine assault rifles and it appears that those citizens are enthusiastically using them against the Russians.
I wonder if the stories about bound and executed civilians are people who took up arms against the invader and didn't have anything resembling a uniform.
That does make them partisans, and partisans can be shot out of hand if captured.
Makes them pretty damned brave too, if you ask me, if they knew that was what was likely to happen to them.
Or, well, it's just Russians doing what Russians have always done when invading places. Which is massacring civilians. Especially Ukranian civilians.
ReplyDeleteNot necessarily clearcut: 3rd Geneva convention article 4.1.6
ReplyDeleteWhen people don't have no place to run and they are put in desperate situation, a lot of people will fight. They have seen the alternative. They were / are a warrior people and fighting to save what they have makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeletejrg