That is also a good signal, that maybe not many Ukrainian POW are held by Russia at the moment. In the past, even Zelensky mentioned, they needed to capture more Russians to have some numbers for the POW exchange between the two countries.
Full war camps in Ukraine could mean Russia has no one to exchange.
Alternatively, it could be that Russia is refusing trades. Everyone knows that Russia can “out - meat” Ukraine, and they’ve just installed a system in which (civilian) prisoners in Russia will be voluntold to serve. We all know that Wagner was doing something similar, but now the MoD will be doing it, en masse.
That’s called storm-z and they’ve been doing this some month after wagner moscow oopsie
Just send them to work units and let them help rebuild and clean up.
Mine clearance would be a good job for them, or cleaning up destroyed buildings, burring dead people… There is much work more than enough so they don’t need to sit around.
Section 3 of the Geneva Convention gives detailed descriptions of types of work various prisoners of war can do, conditions for that work, and much more. All the news articles I’ve read about Ukraine in this regard suggest they’ve been very good about all of this, and in every case much, much better than the barbarity of Russian officers in treating both Ukrainian captives and their own conscripts.
While I completely understand the sense of anger and justice that would have your suggestions make sense, the value to the Ukrainian cause in treating these people with dignity in terms of both securing international aid and showing the Russian people that Ukraine treats their people better than Russian authorities must be worth more in the end.
