Individual Stories...
I keep mentioning that there is resistance inside Russia. We will not know how effective it is until after the war, but some of the resistance gets captured from time to time. So here is the story of one, Ruslan Sidiki. Rospartisan is also correct in pointing out that he is lucky to have a lawyer.
That said, he will likely end up in a colony because, in reality, resistance can be contagious. And the last thing the regime needs is an internal revolt.
Not all captured Resistance members are lucky with lawyers. The heroic Ruslan Sidiki (who derailed a freight train and launched a drone attack on a military airfield) was lucky with his defense attorney. He is a competent and courageous lawyer who clearly understands what is happening.
As reported by “Solidarity Zone”, Ruslan Sidiki’s lawyer Igor Popovsky sent a petition to the investigator to recognize the prisoner as a prisoner of war on the basis of the Geneva Convention.
This is a very correct step. The reactionary Russian “human rights community” has difficulty recognizing some partisans as political prisoners and will certainly never recognize all of our fighters as such.
Meanwhile, many saboteurs, arsonists, as well as Resistance scouts and informants, are sitting in the dungeons.
There are also several heroes who are absolutely priceless for us — these are the liquidators of propagandists and war criminals.
The struggle continues. There will be new operations. There will be new destroyed objects of the Putin regime. There will be new destroyed enemies. And, unfortunately, there will be new prisoners of war. Alas, this is inevitable. This is the inexorable rule of war. You fight — you suffer losses. It cannot be otherwise. Everyone who is familiar with the struggle knows this.
The issue of the status of captured Resistance participants must be resolved systematically. We must achieve prisoner-of-war status for them — so that the Russian opposition, human rights activists, and the West recognize them as such. This is a necessary and feasible task.
In his petition, Ruslan Sidiki’s lawyer recalls the Geneva Convention “Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War” of August 12, 1949.
According to this Convention, prisoners of war include, among others, “ members of other militias and volunteer corps, including members of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in their own territory or outside it.”
The last paragraph is also true. It’s not as if the Russians respect the conventions. Nor have they allowed visits to Ukrainian POWs, let alone Russian resistance members. It is an excellent reminder to the courts that people know these conventions as much as they would care.
Russia did sign on to them, but from early 2022, we have seen systematic violations of these conventions. If the shoe were on the other foot, they would be screaming. This is not complicated. Russia expects everybody else to follow the rules; they will not.
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