kravietz 🦇<p><a class="hashtag" href="https://agora.echelon.pl/tag/putin" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#Putin</a> arrived to <a class="hashtag" href="https://agora.echelon.pl/tag/kursk" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#Kursk</a> clearly cosplaying actual leaders from neighbouring countries 🤦 He spoke about the liberation of Kursk oblast’ long and boringly, but he made some important remarks.</p><p>Firstly, that “Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk will be treated as terrorists”, secondly adding that “Geneva conventions doesn’t apply to foreign mercenaries”.</p><p>Here it is important to remember that Russians often use common words in their private, sociopath meaning, and this is the case here.</p><p>Legal definition of mercenary is a foreign soldier for hire, who fights exclusively for money. And yes, <a class="hashtag" href="https://agora.echelon.pl/tag/russia" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#Russia</a> hastily recruited thousands of mercenaries from all around the world but <a class="hashtag" href="https://agora.echelon.pl/tag/ukraine" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#Ukraine</a> has very few, if any, actual mercenaries because its military pay is more than modest. </p><p>In a classic reversal of meanings, Russians consistently use the term “mercenary” even to people who served in the army as Ukrainian citizens and lived in Ukraine for years - for example Shaun Pinner. The only distinguishing feature of Pinner was… non-Slavic name and that he’s originally British. Even foreign citizens in Ukraine aren’t mercenaries legally if they came as volunteers for ideological motives, even if they receive military pay from Ukraine - and thousands of them do.</p><p>From the same perspective US national Russell “Texas” Bentley, who came to fight for Russia in Donbas was <em>not</em> a mercenary. He was a communist, a miserable idiot killed by his own, but certainly not a mercenary.</p><p>The postulate to “treat them as terrorist” is even more idiotic, because if Putin wants to treat Ukrainian soldiers on Russian territory as “terrorists”, then logically Russian soldiers in Ukraine should be treated in the same way.</p><p>If this is not just Putin’s ramblings for internal use, it has serious practical consequences because with legislation introduced in 2000’s Russia does <em>not</em> return bodies of terrorists, they are buried in anonymous graves.</p>