“I made the decision of a special military operation of demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.” On February 24, 2022, it was in these terms that Vladimir Putin tried to justify the invasion of his neighbor. Three years later, the fights still take place and on the battlefield and on the front of words because, in any conflict, the vocabulary also plays an essential role. The war triggered by Moscow offers a perfect illustration, which serves as a frame for the very interesting work written by the researcher Amélie Férey (The words, weapons of a new war?Editions Times de Parole, Le Robert).
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We will say, and we will not be wrong, that legitimacy has always been an issue in military clashes. Doesn’t Hitler go for Austria and Czechoslovakia in the name of the alleged “right” of the Reich to a “vital space”? The fact remains that the situation has taken a new dimension today. With some 15 billion mobile phones on the planet and the multiplication of social networks, information now circulates much faster. Volodymyr Zelensky has perfectly integrated this data by sporting khaki t-shirts and by subtitling its speeches in English. The battle of international opinion is played in part there.
Infox also spread like a trail of powder, and Russia uses them shamelessly. She created a fake video in which we can hear a false Zelensky launching a call to “lay down her arms”. It also resorts to the envy of robots and artificial intelligence. During the “Doppelgänger operation”, she distributed pseudo-articles inspired by World or the world TV5 chain insisting on the cost of supporting Ukraine for Europeans … if necessary, Putin adapts its arguments. Accusing an Israelite confession man like Zelensky to be close to Nazi ideology was a bit big? Never mind. The head of the Kremlin then argued that his enemy was “a shame for the Jewish people”. Battery, I win. Face, you lose …
The Ukrainian President recalls for his part that he acts on behalf of his people, who regularly expressed his desire to get closer to the Western camp, whether at the time of the elections or during the Monster demonstrations of the Maidan square, in 2014. Also, during his presidential campaign in 2019, he stressed that the proeuropian orientation of Ukraine did not simply correspond to his personal inclination, but to a collective design. “Ukrainians have already chosen European integration.”
Putin, at the same time, tries to impose another conception of sovereignty. Ukraine, according to him, is nothing more than the “cradle of Russia”. Wasn’t it attached to him in the time of Tsars and the USSR? Hence a rhetoric now well established. “Ukraine is an integral part of our history, our culture, our spiritual continuum.” “The West seeks to divide historical Russia.” “Ukraine is an artificial state.” “The Ukrainians still feel Russian.” And so on.
The same semantic battle is raging concerning NATO. According to Putin, a possible membership of Ukraine to the military organization uniting Europe, the United States and Canada would constitute a danger to its country. “”The extension of NATO to the East is a direct threat to the security of Russia, “he said on February 21, 2022. What Zelensky may be backwards to retort only by history, the Peoples of the old “Eastern Europe” simply seek to protect themselves from the aggressiveness of their big neighbor. he underlined in 2024 in kyiv.
For the past three years, he has struggled to convince Westerners to mobilize enough for kyiv. However, he never ceased to show the potential implications of the conflict that takes place on his soil – for the moment. “The objective of the current war is to transform our lives, our resources into a weapon against you, against the international order based on rules,” he insisted in front of the UN in September 2023. A rhetoric that collides to the total indifference of Donald Trump. We do not know that Putin is a great democrat or that Ukraine has attacked Russia? Never mind. In the eyes of the American president, Zelensky is a “dictator” who should never have started this war “. Stunning statements, of course, but which, basically, only illustrates its concept of “alternative truth”.
The War of Words, again.
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In Belgian Flanders, a simple “hello” triggers a controversy
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5 minutes to understand French blockages on regional languages
On the battery side, Romain Colonna is a sociolinguist specializing in minority languages. On the face side, Romain Colonna is an elected nationalist, sitting at the Assembly of Corsica, where the use of Corsica has just been prohibited by the Marseille administrative court. In an educational way, he wonders here about the strange legal interpretations taking place on this question and recalls that, as the UN regularly underlines, France does not respect international law in this area.
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