MOSCOW, June 8 (Portal) – For more than 15 months, Russia has been waging a war in Ukraine that the Kremlin refused to call a war – but that is changing: President Vladimir Putin is using the word ‘war’ more often.
When Putin sent troops to Ukraine on February 24 last year, he called it “a special military operation” — a euphemism the Kremlin, Russian ministers and state media largely stuck to, even coining a new Russian acronym, the “SVO.”
Labeling the conflict a war was effectively banned from the Russian media shortly after the invasion by a sweeping set of laws. The Russian media has been ordered not to use the word “war” – and either complied or shut it down.
But in response to what Russia said was a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow, Putin used the word “war” in connection with Ukraine four times last week, according to a Kremlin transcript of his remarks.
“No matter what we say, they will always try to put the blame on Russia, but that’s not right: we didn’t unleash this war, I repeat, in 2014 – the Kiev regime unleashed the war in Donbass,” he said Putin.
This remark was shown on the main Sunday channel of state television “Rossiya”. Kremlin correspondent Pavel Zarubin told viewers that Putin is devoting a lot of time to the conflict behind the scenes.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was overthrown in Ukraine’s Maidan revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.
On Victory Day on May 9, when Russians commemorate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, Putin told veterans in Red Square: “Again, a real war has been unleashed against our fatherland.”
In recent months, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Wagner mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin have publicly used the word war — or “voina” in Russian.
“We are basically living in wartime conditions,” said Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which has come under attack in recent weeks.
In private, the Russian elite speaks of a war.
The creeping acceptance of the war, even among the general public, gives a glimpse of how perceptions of the Kremlin have changed – and perhaps a foretaste of the future after more than 15 months of the deadliest war in Europe since World War II.
“It is striking how Putin and the elite seem to be breaking their own rules,” said a Western diplomat in Moscow.
“More important is what is being said about the future: does war mean a more serious approach and what will Russia look like at war?”
WAR
Euphemisms for war are nothing new.
US President Lyndon B. Johnson referred to the growing involvement in the Vietnam War as “limited military action”, while the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan was described by US President George W. Bush as “Operation Enduring Freedom”.
When Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev unleashed the ten-year Afghan-Soviet War in 1979, Moscow described the invasion as an operation “to provide international assistance to the friendly Afghan people.”
“They have to remember and be aware that the SVO was invented at a time when they thought they would win quickly and bloodlessly, like in Crimea,” said Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter.
“But now it is clear to everyone that this is a war. And it became clear a long time ago when everyone realized that the blitzkrieg had failed.”
Kremlin transcripts show that Putin has recently used the word repeatedly in connection with what he believes the West is unleashing on an information and sanctions “war” against Russia, blaming Ukraine for a conflict that is now spilling over.
Last year he used the term sparingly.
In September he called the conflict a war when he claimed four Ukrainian regions as part of Russia, in October he said the West was “fomenting war” and in December he was even more explicit and spoke of “this war”.
This prompted Nikita Yuferev, a city councilor in St. Petersburg, to file a complaint. It would go nowhere, Yuferev said, as would complaints about other officials’ use of the word.
“Sooner or later we will get to the point where everyone will call it a war and recognize it as a war,” Yuferev told Portal. “And war can mean martial law, mobilization of the economy, mobilization of the military and reservists.”
RUSSIA AT WAR
The Kremlin said there was no plan for martial law or further mobilization after a limited one last year.
But Putin approved changes last month that allow elections under martial law, and defense contractors have instituted extra shifts to work almost around the clock.
Attacks deep in Russia, for which Moscow blamed Ukraine, have hardened opinion in the Kremlin and emboldened the hawks, who are proposing a much tougher approach in a war Putin says Russia has not even gotten serious about.
In Moscow, the war is portrayed as existential and adorned with Russian Orthodox symbolism.
Russian mercenary Prigozhin, who has accused Putin’s top leadership of ruining the Russian army, raised the prospect of events similar to those under the dictatorship of Chilean general Augusto Pinochet.
“People write to me that we need a Chile to defend ourselves: Chile – that’s a Pinochet; Chile is Russia’s elite — or more importantly, the bureaucratic elite — in a stadium surrounded by people with automatic weapons,” Prigozhin said.
“It’s not a game,” he said. “We’re losing this war.”
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Edited by Philippa Fletcher
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Guy Faulconbridge