Ukraine

I was saying similar to a coworker. Watching these vids made me glad I couldn’t sign up when I was younger. The idea of just chilling in a trench/foxhole in the middle of nowhere and then suddenly a drone can appear and start blowing your guys up. Fuck that.

They're afraid of being treated in a Ukranian POW camp the way they treat Ukranian prisoners

I’d rather do it while I still had the ability rather than wait for a drone to blow me apart one dropped munition at a time or bleed out from agonising shrapnel wounds. Especially if I were conscripted and not serving because I wanted to.

Source: I'm pulling this out of my ass.

Russians are probably telling them how bad PoW get treated by Ukrainians, so their soldiers prefer suicide to being a PoW.

The less PoW Ukraine has, the less power they have in prisoner exchange agreements.

Drones can't take prisoners when they're way behind enemy lines. Normal face-to-face combat allows for surrender, but how can a drone take control of an enemy combatant who surrenders 5 miles behind the lines? That's why you see drones killing the wounded and unarmed. Until they are dead they are an enemy asset that is irretrievable. It's the same reason abandoned enemy equipment is destroyed. If it can't be captured, you don't want the enemy to fix it up and continue using it.

Most Russian soldiers know they can surrender, but they risk being shot by their own troops. Many have families back in Russia who would suffer if they surrender. Some have no idea where the Ukrainian lines are, and walking around way behind the lines is an invitation to the drones. Others have bought into the Russian propoganda about life as a prisoner of war in Ukraine. And some just have too much machismo to surrender. They'd rather die. Surrenders typically happen when there's close combat.

They aren't 'hostages'. They are prisoners of war.

Edit: They are required by international law to take POWs if they surrender properly, so yes they take POWs