Why you should think twice before sharing that viral video of an apparent Russian POW

While not unprecedented — North Vietnam shared photos and film of imprisoned U.S. service members, including the late Sen. John McCain, in hopes of inflaming antiwar sentiment in the United States — the Ukrainian effort, thanks to the Internet, is playing to an audience rarely available in the annals of war.

Anyone can scroll through hundreds of faces of people the government says were killed just hours earlier or who remain captive, their darkest moments immortalized in video for the world to watch. And because it’s on Telegram, viewers can get a notification and react, with emoji, any time a new video is added.

Ukrainian officials have argued that the chilling images will alert Russians to a devastating war effort the Kremlin has sought to conceal. In videos they’ve shared of the phone calls they’ve allowed prisoners to make to their families, Ukrainians can be heard urging the soldiers to ask their parents to rally against Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the bloodshed.

But the tactic also could be interpreted as a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which say governments must “at all times” protect prisoners of war from “insults and public curiosity.”