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Realistically how do you see a peace plan working without amnesty for combatants? It's not fair to victims and it's not "right," but it's been a part of peace deals since the dawn of time because without it, the incentives for fighters are mostly to keep fighting. In a perfect world, all war crimes would be prosecuted and perpetrators brought to justice, but the alternative is that soldiers are faced with the choice of being prosecuted for their crimes or fighting until the end. There is no incentive to lay down arms for these people if they don't have the option of amnesty. I don't see any realistic peace plan in Ukraine that doesn't include amnesty for fighters on both sides, regardless if there are other concessions. It's basically a stalemate and has been the whole time. If Ukraine were winning handily and could force an unconditional surrender, then they could talk about taking amnesty off the table. But that's not the situation and unfortunately I don't see it ever getting to that point. This isn't Trump just sucking up to Putin, it's pretty standard stuff for peace agreements.
Soldiers don't make the decision to keep fighting in this context. If Putin decides to retreat, the soldiers don't go "whelp, if we keep fishing we can't be prosecuted for war crimes" and ignore orders.
Large scale warfare isn't the same as a single battle where there is a fear that surrender is worse than fighting to the death.
In October this year, the Ukrainian Defence Ministry has released an intercepted audio recording of Colombian mercenaries serving in the Russian forces.
In the intercepted exchange, one of the field commanders gives an order in Spanish. Quote as translated by Defence Intelligence of Ukraine:
[Edit typo.]
The incentive is Russia not continuing to lose staggering amounts of troops invading a country they share a border with. Russia could argue civilian casualties via fog of war and other typical war crimes excuse. You don’t accidentally rape in war. The only reason you try to get amnesty for it is if it’s SoP and it’s a tool you’re preserving for future conflicts. Things like rape, kidnapping children and even gunning down clearly unarmed elderly civilians in close range should be outside of scope and not applicable for amnesty by law. I’d also put it to you that even the most morally devoid, ghoul of a human would prefer a jail cell as opposed to dying slowly from being half disintegrated by a drone. Even for the hypothetical few that wouldn’t; the rest of the combat force shouldn’t have to pay that price.
If it's always been like this then oh well 🤷🏻
You are assuming they are fighting directly out of their own free will. That was never the case; they were always sent there by the regime, and by now most of them have been forced anyhow. Seriously, if what the Russian-side soldiers want played into it, the war would already be over.
Here is a - supposedly incomplete - list of convicted war criminals.