I guess that means that troops in those territories cannot claim that any treaty has then been broken if their soldiers are treated inhumanly? Seems to cut both ways?
Not really, Ukraine is signatory to such treaties. Even worse, those are technically Ukrainian citizens, and recently DNR/LNR have been "drafting" every male resident going as far as literally chasing them and beating them on the street:
https://vimeo.com/698397206So this basically means that Ukrainian forces have to fight their own forcibly drafted citizens, who didn't want to be in this war to begin with. They were like 10 years old in 2014 when some dude in Kremlin decided their fate. Such a horrible mess.