You'll never take me alive!

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the Russian occupiers of our new home had no interest in negotiating their own safe withdrawal, instead self destructing every vessel in their POS. The Rorqual as spoken about earlier and now the only thing of value they had left, the Archon. Numerous smaller ships met a similar fate and they withdrew from system in a Viator and some Covert frigates never to be seen again.

Tactics like this have always confused me. I understand that not everyone who plays EVE wants to PvP, but when you're faced with the certainty of your own ships destruction as they were, wouldn't you take a swing at it anyway? To be clear, this isn't an exclusively Russian thing to do, I've witnessed La Division Bleu do it before on a grand scale and obviously lesser entities in W-Space regions, but I'm at a loss to explain the mindset.

Is it considered a small victory to deny PvP players the opportunity to PvP? Is it just in an effort to deny the attacking force some spoils of victory? For future reference, quite often your attacker just wants control of the system, a peaceful withdrawal can be negotiated.

I know were I in a position that I couldn't negotiate my way out of I would most certainly fight to the last ship, I get insurance payouts regardless and maybe I could take a few out along the way and actually salvage some pride instead of skulking away with dignity in tatters.

It's all mathematical now, of course. The system is ours, the Russians are evicted and the killboard is green.