The Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine with a Mi-8 helicopter is now providing key aviation intelligence to Ukraine, defense agency says

alphacyberranger@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 473 points –
The Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine with a Mi-8 helicopter is now providing key aviation intelligence to Ukraine, defense agency says
businessinsider.com
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Putting him on TV is a bad fucking idea. That must discourage a lot of Russian soldiers thinking about doing the same.

Could be that Russia's response to this information might cause themselves more harm than it will affect future defectors, even if it prevents as many from doing so. There's also the question about how safe it is to accept Russian defectors since any of them could be double agents, so maybe Ukraine isn't that worried about cutting them off.

Or maybe they want to flush out Russian assassins be offering a tantalizing political target instead of them going after more strategic ones.

Could be that Russia’s response to this information might cause themselves more harm than it will affect future defectors

Yeah, that occurred to me as well. Provoke an atmosphere of suspicion, don't trust each other, even perhaps encourage cases of friendly fire.

It's possible that the amount of defectors isn't actually close to being important and the few real cases are more useful as psyops.