When Nadiya Savchenko returned home to Ukraine from Russian captivity, she was greeted by happy, adoring crowds. The president himself went to fetch her in his airplane, she was drowned in flowers, every TV station wants to interview her, people are going nuts with joy.
At the same time, the two Russian POWs who were exchanged for Nadiya and returned home to Russia were not greeted by anybody except their mildly indifferent wives. Nobody talks about them, it is as if they didn’t exist.
This is not strange if we remember that the existence of POWs was considered shameful back in the USSR. A Soviet soldier was expected to die before he got himself captured. The liberated Soviet POWs were considered traitors and were sent to concentration camps back in the USSR.
But hey, this isn’t just a Soviet thing. Isn’t there a presidential candidate who agrees with Stalin that POWs are contemptible because they allowed themselves to be captured?
Clarissa's Blog 
This doesn’t pertain to your post directly, but I thought you’d find it interesting:
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/culture-and-smiling/483827/
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Or maybe life sucks so much in Russia that people have nothing to smile about.
The article is right: this is how the culture is set up.
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