First, these statements are generally read from a printed statement.
Second, these statements generally include self-incriminating confessions of war crimes by the prisoners themselves.
Third, these statement generally include a denunciation of their own side in stark political terms.
The statements by all three are actually self-exonerating. They claim they only found out they were going to Ukraine while actually on the way there. They did not confess to any illegal acts or crimes while in the country. Their general appeal was more of an apology to the people of Ukraine and a the hope that the Russian people would be able to figure out what was going on inside Ukraine itself.
All in all, they actually come off pretty sympathetically against the Ukraine government’s general presentation of Russians as bloodthirsty killers engaged in genocide. If this was something done by Ukraine for pure propaganda purposes it would have been better to have them confess to being there to murder civilians in cold blood on orders from Putin. There are also reports that Interior Ministry units are part of the effort behind the lines to apprehend Russian deserters and shoot them, so it would have served as good propaganda to get them to admit to that as well.
It is also notable that the statement is led by a Lieutenant Colonel and not a low-ranking member of the OMON. This is a career guy with years of service and what they did on camera is effectively treason in Russia that would result in them being put on trial for their lives. This is a pretty strong inducement not to cooperate at all with your Urkainian captors since it means death when you are returned to Russia. There have been prisoner exchanges between Ukraine and Russia that would also bolster prisoner resistance to involuntary cooperation as well. Appearing on camera like this, pretty much means they can never return to Russia, or they are looking at long prison sentences or execution as traitors.
While these guys probably did not attend anything like the SERE schools we have for servicemembers in the US, they do interrogate people for a living as “law enforcement” personnel in Russia, so they would understand common methods of resisting interrogation themselves, so they didn’t get tricked into doing this thing.
With all that in mind, it is important to note that this was not an open press conference attended by the international press. There are few questions asked of them and reporters are not identified at all.
The questions they do ask are not the questions we would have asked like,
“Where and how were you captured?”
“What are your injuries and how did you get them?”
“Were you coersed into making this statement today?”
“How are you being treated by Ukraine?”
“Have you been contacted by the Red Cross and have you been allowed to contact your families?”
You may think prisoners would not be able to give honest answers to these questions, but you don’t ask them expecting honest answers. You ask them in order to give the prisoner the opportunity to show by the manner in which he answers that they are forced and not voluntary.
Is this propaganda? Certainly. The question is though, is it propanganda coersed from POWs after torture? You can watch the video yourself and decide for yourself, but it has various indictations of being voluntary.
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