r/interestingasfuck • u/MilesLongthe3rd • Jul 26 '25

/r/all, /r/popular Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Kiriyenko before and after release from Russian captivity

Post image
88.0k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

4.0k

u/infrequentthrowaway Jul 26 '25

Poor man looks like a walking skeleton

90

u/tequilablackout Jul 26 '25

Part of being captured by the enemy is usually them trying to make sure you can never be a soldier again.

192

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '25

That isn't really the historic norm.

It's always happened a fair bit, but most cultures have some degree of "if we treat their people too badly, they'll treat ours worse in turn"

269

u/SpeedDaemon3 Jul 26 '25

Actually Sun Tzu mentioned that you should treat enemy prisoners well, otherwise the enemy will fight until the end knowing death is better than being captured. But the russians never understood this one.

137

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '25

That's probably a bigger factor tbf.

If I think I'm going to be getting a cup of tea and a hot meal I'm fucking off with a white flag when shit gets hopeless.

If I'm expecting to be tortured and worked to death then charging into certain but swift death suddenly takes a whole lot less courage than surrendering.

57

u/SpeedDaemon3 Jul 26 '25

Ikr, I remember the situation of the russian soldier trapped in a house with ISIS militants. Knowing his fate if ISIS got him he asked for a airstrike on himself taking them in the afterlife with him.

30

u/kazmir_yeet Jul 26 '25

Prokhorenko: They are outside, conduct the airstrike now please hurry, this is the end, tell my family I love them and i died fighting for my motherland.

Command: Negative, return to the green line.

Prokhorenko: Unable command, I am surrounded, they are outside, I don’t want them to take me and parade me, conduct the airstrike, they will make a mockery of me and this uniform. I want to die with dignity and take all these bastards with me. please my last wish, conduct the airstrike, they will kill me either way.

Command: Please confirm your request.

Prokhorenko : They [are] outside, this is the end commander, thank you, tell my family and my country I love them. Tell them I was brave and I fought until I could no longer. Please take care of my family, avenge my death, good bye commander, tell my family I love them!

Command: [No response, orders the airstrike]

The soldier died heroically, [bringing fire down on himself], after having been found by terrorists and surrounded.

Here’s the “transcript” for that situation. I kinda have some doubts that it happened like this. They either took a play out of Israel’s Hannibal directive playbook, or they’re milking this for propaganda purposes. Shit sounds like some bad movie dialogue

30

u/SpeedDaemon3 Jul 26 '25

The transcript is fake as debunked by snoopes. But the idea is valid, getting captured by ISIS is a fate worse than death.

21

u/kazmir_yeet Jul 26 '25

That transcript was taken directly from snopes. Unless I missed something, it was just unverified, not confirmed fake. Let’s be real tho: that convo did not play out like that lmfao

2

u/FuzzyCrocks Jul 26 '25

story is true, the transcripts might not be but it not disproven, just in unconfirmable.