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Well, this post kinda exemplifies my point: @Dean is living in some sort of fantastical propagandistic counterreality where Russia is engaging in Warhammer 40k levels of no-prisoners, collateral-damage, occult-civilian-torture Khorne worship tier warfare. Which they're not, as the very existance of POWs attests. Having norms of war that you're not supposed to violate ever, is therefore a good idea, because you may, as in the case of @Dean, find yourself deranged with bloodlust and disconnected from reality, and without those (hopefully) inviolable norms you may thereby be led to doing something stupid, like playing dehumanisation chicken with an enemy who holds hundreds of thousands of your people under occupation.
Sure, maybe Ukrainians under occupation, and POWs in Russian hands, are not quite as sprightly as one would like, but they're not all literally dead, and therefore ipso facto we have proof that Russians are showing (some level of) restraint / respect for the humanity of Ukrainians under their boots. So I reiterate that Finland's dehumanisation race to the bottom has ample space to make things worse via retaliation.
Citation where I said this, please.
Please identify the argument I made which the very existence of POWs attests. (Or contests.)
My position is that the Russians already engage in dehumanization of the Ukrainians in their occupation zones, entered into the war with an intent of cultural genocide, planned for filtration camps to target non-combattants, and that there is no game of 'chicken' going on because the Russians intended to do this from the start.
Please identify what policies the Russians will inact as retaliation as opposed to what they have already been doing before and were already going to do regardless of Finnish politician positions.
Is your position that the Russians will move from limited torture and murder of civilians on the basis of imperialistic ethnochauvenism to significantly less limited torture and murder on the basis of Finnish politicians, as opposed to increasing war-stress of conscript troops in need of catharsis amidst a grinding war they are poorly equipped or trained to handle professionally?
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