Furthermore, if Ukrainians are committing war crimes against the invading Russian army which basically has war crimes as their tactics and strategy, they're mostly morally justified. Hopefully they don't.
Yikes. Good thing you don't speak for anyone but yourself. Justifying war crimes from any side is so far beyond the pale, it's mind-blowing.
For a precedent, the Soviet army treated German POWs and worse, civilians, atrociously. But they had just suffered through a bitter war of destruction where they themselves were treated similarly.
It's up to the commanders to keep things clean and not let the anger spillover. Of course the Soviets didn't care, and on the contrary encouraged atrocities. So far the Ukrainians seem to be taking the high road, and all the better for everyone.
There’s a video on Reddit of Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian POWs in legs, with AKs.
The soldiers were from a local guard, and the POWs from an artillery unit that had been bombarding their small city.
I think it’s on /r/combatfootage, or /r/UkraineWarVideoReport, if you want to look it up.