Russia recently released ten foreign fighters – among them five British citizens – being held as prisoners of war (PoWs) from the fighting in Ukraine. The decision to repatriate these men provides a timely reminder of the resurgence of the international law rules surrounding PoW status and treatment.
Prisoner swaps have been relatively rare in recent years, partly because of the smaller number of full-scale state-on-state armed conflicts and partly because of warring states’ reluctance to mutually agree on the designation of “protecting powers”. These are neutral countries or organisations that oversee the interests of PoWs. The last armed conflict to date in which protecting powers were successfully designated was the 1982 Falklands war, when the role was taken on by Switzerland (on behalf of the UK) and Brazil (on behalf of Argentina).
The legal framework governing the current armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine is international humanitarian law (IHL), which regulates the conduct of belligerents on the battlefield and also the treatment of “victims of warfare” – a legal expression that includes PoWs.
