“I don’t give a f***k about what I am accused of, believe it or not,” he said, according to a recording of the conversation. “I shot 15 prisoners dead. I don’t give a f***k.”
Wartime prisoners have a special status. Pavlov violates every one of them.
May 21, 2022
By Dan Peleschuk
Kyiv - “If I want to, I kill. If not, I don’t.”
That’s part of the cold, startling alleged confession of an infamous separatist commander in eastern Ukraine. This week he reportedly admitted to the Kyiv Post newspaper that he personally executed more than a dozen Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Arseniy Pavlov, better known by his nom de guerre “Motorola,” is one of many Russian volunteers who have flocked to eastern Ukraine in the past year to join the Moscow-backed insurgency against Ukrainian government forces.
He's gained a cult following among rebel sympathizers in Ukraine and Russia, and has featured as a star in Russian state media.
His exploits include leading the seizure earlier this year of the highly symbolic Donetsk airport, and even staging a high-profile wartime wedding last summer with a local Ukrainian insurgent....
Kyiv - “If I want to, I kill. If not, I don’t.”
That’s part of the cold, startling alleged confession of an infamous separatist commander in eastern Ukraine. This week he reportedly admitted to the Kyiv Post newspaper that he personally executed more than a dozen Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Arseniy Pavlov, better known by his nom de guerre “Motorola,” is one of many Russian volunteers who have flocked to eastern Ukraine in the past year to join the Moscow-backed insurgency against Ukrainian government forces.
He's gained a cult following among rebel sympathizers in Ukraine and Russia, and has featured as a star in Russian state media.
His exploits include leading the seizure earlier this year of the highly symbolic Donetsk airport, and even staging a high-profile wartime wedding last summer with a local Ukrainian insurgent....
There is also a huge division among the people taken prisoner by Russia. Some are innocent Ukrainians that never was involved in any aspect of the war.
...When Ukraine, (click here) Russia and Moscow-backed separatists exchange prisoners, it is usually men — captured fighters and male civilians. In the latest exchange on December 29, 2019, however, pro-Russian separatists handed over a total of 76 people to Ukraine, more than a dozen of them women. DW met two of those women in a clinic in Kyiv, where they were receiving medical care.
Olena Sorokina stood out during the prisoner swap. She got off the bus wearing a white sweatshirt that had a trident, the Ukrainian national emblem, sketched on the front with a ballpoint pen. On the back, the shirt was emblazoned with the words: "Ukraine is my state."
"I drew on the sweatshirt at night in my cell under the bed," Sorokina said, adding that was what she wanted to wear when returning to Ukrainian forces. "There were armed guards on the bus, so I only put the sweatshirt on when I saw soldiers with Ukrainian insignia outside — at that point, nobody could hurt me anymore."...
Regardless the danger in identifying themselves as Ukrainian, they never, not one second succumbed to the pressure of changing their identity. These people are NOT Russian in any aspect of their hearts or minds.
Vladimir Putin and his Duma have on many, many legal fronts indicated the "rights of Russian speaking people" for their enforced civil war in eastern Ukraine. There is absolutely no one in Ukraine that sees their identity as "Russian speaking" as a proof of their nationality/ethnicity. Putin has CREATED a scenario for his politics to maintain the civil war in eastern Ukraine even if he has to kill every Russian Speaking UKRAINIAN in the process.
THESE ARE NOT LEGITIMATE PRISONERS OF WAR!!!!!!!!!!
Stop allowing Putin's delusion! There is no legitimate narrative that can have within it's context any justification for the civil war nor the current killing campaign.
This is all a propaganda campaign and not a legal or legitimate reason for killing. All Ukrainians are confronted with the option to live up to expectations as prisoners, etcetera, or die. There is no real choice in any aspect of Putin's war. The Ukrainians have an obligation to the world to survive. The methods in maintaining their lives, regardless any guilt, will always be justified. There can be no crime for staying alive.
First deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, (click here) representative of Ukraine in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group for Donbas, Iryna Gerashchenko, has said that the Ukrainian side is ready to transfer 20 Russians who are held in Ukrainian prisons in order to release Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia; this issue will be raised in Minsk on Wednesday, April 4.
“The working group will meet in Minsk on April 4 … The second issue that we will raise is the release of hostages. The Ukrainian side is doing everything to ensure that the next wave of hostage release is taken as soon as possible. But for us it is important to release not only those, who remain in the occupied territory, but also the captives of the Kremlin,” Gerashchenko told reporters in Kyiv on April 2.
She said that the Ukrainian side is ready to hand over “20 Russians who are detained in Ukrainian prisons for violating Ukrainian legislation and participating in the war in order to free Sentsov [a Ukrainian film director who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for terrorism], Kolchenko [Crimean activist Oleksandr Kolchenko] and our other prisoners.”
At the same time, Gerashchenko noted that in this issue “the will of the Russian Federation is very important.”...
50 U.S. Code § 4105 - Prisoners of war
As used in subsection (b) of this section, (click here) the term “prisoner of war” means any regularly appointed, enrolled, enlisted, or inducted member of the military or naval forces of the United States who was held as a prisoner of war for any period of time subsequent to December 7, 1941, by any government of any nation with which the United States has been at war subsequent to such date....
