Russian military sources say there are reasonable suspicions that some of Azov's leading group do not want to surrender and are considering either continuing to hide in underground tunnels or committing suicide.
"Before being taken prisoner, the Nazis smashed their phones and tablets to avoid finding material that would make it easier to prove their guilt in war crimes," said Alexander Khodakovsky, the founder of the Donetsk "Vostok" battalion.
All this while the trials of the neo-Nazis began in Russia Denis Muryga, a member of the "Aidar" Battalion that fought in Kherson, has been arrested and is on trial.
Military Commander Yuri Kotenok estimated that in two days about 1,600 Azov fighters had already surrendered.
Thus, "a minority remains" including the leaders of the "Azov", "Volyn" and "Radish" Battalions.
"Theoretically, I understand that one of the 'Bandera trio' does not yet want to surrender alive to the 'cursed Muscovites' and will try to commit suicide. Why do it? "For example, out of fear," says the military commander.
The scenario of the suicide of the leaders of "Azov" is confirmed by the phrase of the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Arsen Avakov.
The leading team of the Azov Order consists of "Kalyn", "Volyn" and "Radish" known as Denis Prokopenko. There are already reports that the first one was handed over. But not the other two."
The deputy commander of the Azov Battalion, Svyatoslav Palamar, nicknamed "Kalyn", surrendered to "Azovstal", military sources said.
"Now the Donetsk state security services are cooperating with him," said a Russian military correspondent. However, a military commander from Donetsk said that "Kalyn should not have surrendered, but committed suicide with so many crimes he has committed."
Smashing a phone would not prevent access to its internal storage.......
Uh, if the solid state drive is part of the damage, yeah. It would.
In addition, if the battery is hit/damaged and flairs up, good chance it cooks anything usable.
So unlikely, dude. You might as well throw an iMac off a balcony and wonder why nothing incriminating fell out. Files can be retrieved from heavily damaged hardware.
Professional data recovery may be able to help if the drive is still intact.
It depends on how damaged and how important the data is, and what you need. They can check the raw data, see if files are accessible either with phone interface emulation or an actual same model. If you need the phone in exact condition before the drop, they'll have to try to image everything, and mask over and exact identical phone model (close as possible including batch made) and transfer/rebuild the contents.
When I sent out for recovery, it usually started at $500.00 and went up from there. Depending on what you need and how damaged, it could cost thousands. In rare cases easily 10k+ when it was damaged enough/ important enough data. Some places will do an assessment for not too much, let you know an estimate.
Oh, and they never guarantee recovery.
This was all 7+ years ago, so it has changed a lot, but basics are still sound.
So let me make sure I understand what you are saying.
If a soldier smashes his phone, and his solid state drive is in pieces, like literal pieces. Deformed, torn from stress, fractured pieces, good chance they were superheated from a failed lithium battery, that you (YOU) could get USABLE data from it?
This is kind of a trick question so think carefully, not that I'm an expert by any means, coming from 28 years in IT, (including non-gov't data recovery).