Reports of Russian soldiers raping Ukrainian women and girls are beginning to trickle in.
How reliable are those reports? Propaganda about Russian military incompetence is one thing, but spreading false rumors about war crimes is a huge moral hazard, as is underreporting them.
We should expect the rape of Ukrainian women and girls to increase hyperlinearly as the war drags on and Russia occupies more territory. The Soviet Union is infamous for the mass rape of women and girls in occupied territory at the end of World War II.
The world today (or for that matter late 80′s Soviet Union) is a very different one from WW2. I still expect the Russian military to be incentivized to suppress both the reporting of- and the war crimes themselves.
Propaganda about Russian military incompetence is one thing, but war crime is a whole other beast. Spreading false rumors about war crimes is a huge moral hazard, as is underreporting them.
My priority here has nothing to do with pro-Russian or anti-Russian propaganda. I am concerned for readers in Ukraine. I want them to be prepared.
Stalin had much tighter domestic control using much more brutal means than Putin has over Russia today. Maintaining the narrative that Russians are the good guys becomes more difficult with publicized war crimes
Risk of dying in war is much lower for Russian soldiers now than in WW2 while risk of persecution for war crimes is higher, i.e. they have something to lose. At the very least, it’s going to be a problem if said Russian soldiers had any plans of surrendering/emigrating to the West at some point
Pressure for the West to intervene directly as more war crimes become public
The conscripts actually in Ukraine care very little about the needs of the Russian propaganda machine. Their decision to hurt or not hurt people will be based on their personal moral compunctions, opportunity, and Russian armed forces’ institutional culture.
I’ll register a prediction that if Ukraine wins the war, and such war crimes are proven beyond a shadow of the doubt, a very small proportion, if any, of the foot soldiers will be prosecuted. Even when the perpetrators unconditionally surrender, normally, most of those complicit in wartime atrocities like the Holocaust get away with it. The average Russian soldier realizes this, and so concludes they are unlikely to face justice from anyone except their superiors in the Russian military, who will be hesitant to intervene because intervening would mean acknowledging such crimes to the public and their CO’s.
NATO is not willing to start a nuclear conflict over a few crimes against humanity. The west has at this point pretty much out run out of diplomatic ammunition in its efforts to support Ukraine, so there’s no incentive anymore for Putin to consider what we think.
I’ll add another point related to 2. but somewhat distinct:
In war, the more brutal the fighting, the more savage soldiers tend to become as they both become desensitized to violence and are more driven by a thirst for retribution. Conversely, since the fighting in the current war is much less brutal than WW2-days, we should correspondingly expect less savagery towards civilians.
How reliable are those reports? Propaganda about Russian military incompetence is one thing, but spreading false rumors about war crimes is a huge moral hazard, as is underreporting them.
The world today (or for that matter late 80′s Soviet Union) is a very different one from WW2. I still expect the Russian military to be incentivized to suppress both the reporting of- and the war crimes themselves.
I’m mostly working from priors.
My priority here has nothing to do with pro-Russian or anti-Russian propaganda. I am concerned for readers in Ukraine. I want them to be prepared.
I disagree that it’s different in a relevant way. What would be the critical difference for the parties involved?
Stalin had much tighter domestic control using much more brutal means than Putin has over Russia today. Maintaining the narrative that Russians are the good guys becomes more difficult with publicized war crimes
Risk of dying in war is much lower for Russian soldiers now than in WW2 while risk of persecution for war crimes is higher, i.e. they have something to lose. At the very least, it’s going to be a problem if said Russian soldiers had any plans of surrendering/emigrating to the West at some point
Pressure for the West to intervene directly as more war crimes become public
The conscripts actually in Ukraine care very little about the needs of the Russian propaganda machine. Their decision to hurt or not hurt people will be based on their personal moral compunctions, opportunity, and Russian armed forces’ institutional culture.
I’ll register a prediction that if Ukraine wins the war, and such war crimes are proven beyond a shadow of the doubt, a very small proportion, if any, of the foot soldiers will be prosecuted. Even when the perpetrators unconditionally surrender, normally, most of those complicit in wartime atrocities like the Holocaust get away with it. The average Russian soldier realizes this, and so concludes they are unlikely to face justice from anyone except their superiors in the Russian military, who will be hesitant to intervene because intervening would mean acknowledging such crimes to the public and their CO’s.
NATO is not willing to start a nuclear conflict over a few crimes against humanity. The west has at this point pretty much out run out of diplomatic ammunition in its efforts to support Ukraine, so there’s no incentive anymore for Putin to consider what we think.
I’ll add another point related to 2. but somewhat distinct:
In war, the more brutal the fighting, the more savage soldiers tend to become as they both become desensitized to violence and are more driven by a thirst for retribution. Conversely, since the fighting in the current war is much less brutal than WW2-days, we should correspondingly expect less savagery towards civilians.