This can be answered on a couple of levels.
POWs would always be a cost of war, there are realities surrounding the battlefield and the human tolerance for fear. Sometimes, soldiers would give up in situations they deem to be hopeless.
No one would call the captured soldiers “failures”. They were captured not because they didn’t make efforts – a great deal of efforts at that. More than it, there are several reasons why “surrender” can happen:
An online user once narrated his grandmother’s brother story of war: He was captured by the Germans in the Great War, his two brothers were killed. Despite the fact that he was gassed and stabbed before being captured – he was captured in this state. He looked on himself as a failure and sought refuge in the bottle. No one else thought him a failure.
This online user also had a neighbour who was a Prisoner of War in WW2; his unit was ordered to surrender.
In another instance, a soldier was unloading boxes of ammunition (he was un-armed and in his shirt sleeves) until he turned round to see a German with an SMG he thought (as did all his Platoon) that the Germans were many many miles away.
Another soldier was put in a box by the Chinese in Prison Camp in Korea and awarded the MC for not giving in.
The experiences of Russian soldiers will be very similar and similarly varied. The only opinions that should matter to them are those of their comrades and their families.
