CEPA: Too Late for Russia to Stop the Foreign Volunteer Army
(CEPA is the Center for European Policy Analysis)
The Kremlin makes dark threats about the fate of foreign volunteers captured on the battlefield, but these are likely to rebound.
Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has produced some strange and unexpected results, not least the rush among Western citizens to join President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s armed forces.
Ukrainian defense officials claim that over 20,000 individuals from 52 nations have volunteered to join the Ukrainian armed forces resisting the Russian invasion, perhaps the most notable volunteer effort since the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.
Among them are US software developers, Canadian cooks, numerous ex-service personnel, and even (the UK government has admitted) a soldier from one of Britain’s most venerable regiments, the Coldstream Guards, who is reported to have gone absent without leave to head for Ukraine. At least three other serving UK personnel have done likewise; the government has pledged to prosecute them on their return.
Russia has responded with threats, trying to scare and sway potential volunteers to reconsider, and threatening repercussions if captured by Russian forces. Russia says that those joining the Ukrainian armed forces are bandits, criminals, and mercenaries and will be punished accordingly.
Defense Ministry spokesperson, Igor Konashenkov, said on March 3 that any foreign volunteer taken in Ukraine will not be accorded prisoner of war (PoW) status, but will be treated as a law-breaker accountable for their acts. Konashenkov hinted at executions by stating that, “at best, they can expect to be prosecuted as criminals.” Naturally, if that is the best-case scenario, then the worst-case scenario would suggest execution as a possible outcome.
In fact, international law is clear and applies to Russia’s treatment of PoWs. Under the Geneva Convention, article 4, reads; “Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy: Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.”
As long as these volunteers themselves follow the laws of armed conflict, they are by international law protected as prisoners of war (PoW). There is no ambiguity about this: those who volunteer to join the Ukrainian armed forces are protected by the Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law. There is an established legal doctrine, and there is no space for contrarian interpretation.
[link:https://cepa.org/too-late-for-russia-to-stop-the-foreign-volunteer-army/|]
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