> rules do not apply to war, Geneva Convention notwithstanding.
I don't know what so-called international law says, but if you're going to try to apply rules to war, it seems pretty essential that they apply to all sides or no sides, otherwise you create an exploitable situation that's ripe for abuse. The reward for following the rules should be that the other parties in the conflict follow them, too. The punishment for breaking them should be that the other parties no longer follow them.
The rules allow for wars. They don't prevent killing every combatant the other side has. The two sides agree to have a war, then their combatants kill one another until one side gives up or runs out of people to draft as combatants. The rules prohibit killing various classes of noncombatants, with some situational exceptions.
The supposed force behind the Geneva Convention is the threat of being tried for war crimes after the dust settles.
If you are Putin, and can accept never traveling to a list of western countries again, that threat is toothless.
But if you are literally defeated (as opposed to being forced to retreat from Ukraine, the most anyone could hope for in the invasion), it could weigh heavily on you. Or not. Politics are stupid.
that’s a very manichean view. War ist all shades of (horrible) gray and you can have rules, a lot, none, everything is possible. Don’t know what you mean with “Geneva Convention notwithstanding” here, it’s exactly the kind of rules that _can_ exist in times of war – or be completely ignored on both sides.
It’s not because it’s war time that one should just resign, shrug and accept any atrocities. The less atrocities during war time, that more chances for a stable peace afterward.
