[Asec] Elliott: Russian POWs in Ukraine: At War's End Should They Be Forced to Return Home?

[Mark Elliott]

*The US Should Oppose the Forced Repatriation of Russian POWs in Ukraine*

By Mark R. Elliott <https://providencemag.com/authors/mark-r-elliott/> on
April 11, 2022

*Providence - A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy*
<https://providencemag.com/>

https://providencemag.com/2022/04/us-should-oppose-forced-repatriation-russian-prisoners-of-war-pows-ukraine/

In the wake of early April 2022 revelations of Russian atrocities in Bucha
and Borodyanka, and with every prospect of more Russian crimes against
Ukrainian civilians still to come to light, a peace settlement between
Ukraine and Russia would appear all the more distant. Still, talks, sooner
or later, will have to become serious.

On March 27, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy floated a peace proposal that
would provide for Ukrainian neutrality in exchange for ironclad assurances
from the United States and other Western powers guaranteeing his nation’s
security against future Russian aggression. Should Washington become a
party to such a peace settlement, it should at the same time be prepared to
defend Ukraine against inevitable Kremlin pressure to forcibly repatriate
Russian prisoners of war.

Why inevitable? Because we should learn from the consequences of the
torturous negotiations on this point at Yalta at the end of World War II.
Some Russian POWs in Ukrainian hands are bound to resist repatriation for
fear of retribution for their surrender, an action Moscow will interpret as
a blot on the reputation of its armed forces. The same fear possessed
Soviet citizens outside the USSR in 1945. In that year at the Crimean
Conference, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill caved to Joseph
Stalin’s insistence upon the forced repatriation of Soviet nationals.

How did it happen that the United States and Great Britain had custody of
Soviet nationals at the end of World War II? Of some 8.35 million Red Army
prisoners of war and forced laborers (*Ostarbeiter*) under Nazi control,
approximately 5.65 million survived the war scattered across Europe. The
Red Army repatriated three million directly while the Western allies took
possession of some 2.65 million Soviet displaced persons (DPs). Under terms
of two bilateral POW agreements at Yalta, the US and the UK forcibly
repatriated 2.35 million Soviet citizens, while approximately 400,000
refugees from Soviet-held territories managed to escape this fate, the
largest portion (150,000), incidentally, being ethnic Ukrainians. Treaty
language did not specify the use of coercion, but the precedent had been
set by the British as early as the fall of 1944, and all concerned
privately understood that Soviet citizens would be given no choice other
than return to the USSR, ready or not.

Western powers agreed to forced repatriation primarily to ensure the safe
return of approximately 50,000 American and British POWs stranded across
Eastern Europe—former prisoners of the Germans liberated by the advancing
Red Army. Western diplomats feared Stalin might hold these men against
their will if all Soviet citizens in the West were not sent home.

A vengeful Stalin insisted upon forced repatriation primarily out of a
desire to punish anyone who had helped, or conceivably might have helped,
the Nazis: military collaborators, unsurprisingly, but also POWs and forced
laborers. Absolutely no reason exists to believe Vladimir Putin has a more
charitable view of POWs than Stalin. Russia’s autocrat has called opponents
of the Ukraine war, including over 200,000 Russian citizens who have gone
voluntarily into exile abroad, “scum and traitors.” He undoubtedly has an
even lower opinion of his soldiers who have surrendered in Ukraine.

So February-March 2022 saw a flurry of proposals in print recommending
offers
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-soldiers-out-ukraine-defect-invasion-refugee-soft-power-putin-nato-military-morale-11646341257>
 of asylum for Russian troops
<https://time.com/6155971/russian-troop-defect-refugee-us/> surrendering in
Ukraine
<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/opinion/ukraine-putin-russia-refugees.html?referringSource=articleShare>
.

For decades William F. Buckley Jr. and Chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr.
occupied extreme opposite ends of America’s conservative-liberal political
divide. Besides Yale and the Central Intelligence Agency, they had very
little in common. But on one issue they were in total agreement: they
voiced total repugnance for America’s role in the forced repatriation of
Soviet citizens after World War II. Buckley decried the act as “most
inexcusable” (*Dick Cavett Show*, June 12, 1978), while Coffin lamented
<https://www.amazon.com/Once-Every-William-Sloane-Coffin/dp/B000PGLQVG>,
“The memory… is so painful that it’s almost impossible for me to write
about it… My part… left me a burden of guilt I am sure to carry the rest of
my life” (*Once to Every Man: A Memoir* [New York, 1977)], 72 and 77).

Pray that no Americans or Ukrainians at the end of the present war will
have to carry a lifetime burden for having repeated the World War II
Western allies’ moral failure in yielding to Kremlin pressure to forcibly
repatriate Russian POWs against their will. On humanitarian grounds, the
United States and Ukraine should have no part in such a postwar settlement
that involves ushering Russian soldiers captured in Ukraine into the grasp
of a spiteful and malevolent Putin.

*Mark R. Elliott*, Ph.D., is a retired professor of European and Russian
history and author of *Pawns of Yalta; Soviet Refugees and America’s Role
in Their Repatriation* (University of Illinois Press). For 25 years
(1993–2017) he served as editor of the* East-West Church and Ministry
Report *(www.eastwestreport.org), and now serves as editor emeritus.

-- 
Dr. Mark R. Elliott, Editor Emeritus
East-West Church Report
Asbury University
One Macklem Dr.
Wilmore, KY 40390
859-858-2427
emark936 at gmail.com
www.eastwestreport.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://easternchristianity.org/pipermail/asec_easternchristianity.org/attachments/20220411/a6dca7b7/attachment.htm>