KIEV The Russian invasion has affected not only Ukraine but also the Ukrainian language in many ways. It shows in rhetoric, vocabulary and even spelling.
In the spring, many Ukrainian media switched to the new spelling: Russia, Moscow, Vladimir Putin and the names of members of Putin’s administration began to be written with a lowercase initial as a sign of lack of respect. Also Belarus and its dictator Alexander Lukashenko the name is often written in lower case.
Several Ukrainian media outlets have started this trend, but by no means all. For example, the Ukrainian broadcasting company Suspilne and the news agency Unian follow the traditional spelling. Instead, Ukrainian news channels on Telegram most often show their disrespect towards Russia by using lowercase initials.
Humor and irony, which lift the spirits of Ukrainians during the war, also affect the language. Since the term temporarily occupied is used for the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, at some point the minions working in the hands of Russia started to be called temporarily alive.
This term was particularly apt in relation to the city of Kherson, where a guerrilla movement emerged during the occupation. During this year, the guerrillas ended the “temporary existence” of many puppet government leaders by murdering them.
The war has also given birth to new phenomena and concepts, for which new words were needed in the Ukrainian language. Here are the most important of them:
Apart from the fact that the name of Russia is often written with a small initial letter, various derogatory names have been invented for it, the most used of which are “swamps” and Mordor, which refers to the author by JRR Tolkien to the land of darkness of the fantasy world.
If Russia is Mordor, the Russian soldiers must also be from the same world, the Ukrainians conclude. In Tolkien’s books, there are hostile and warlike mythical creatures called orcs, which Ukrainians think is a perfect term to describe the enemy.
For Ukrainians, the war already started in 2014. That’s why in February a term was needed for this new phase, where Russia is trying to take over all of Ukraine. A full-scale attack has become a well-established term. It is significant that the corresponding Russian term (полномасштабное вторжение) is used mostly in Ukrainian, but not in other Russian-language sources.
At the beginning of this year, a separate protectorate network was created for the Defense Forces of Ukraine, which covers the entire country. After February 24, Ukrainians began to actively register not only in the army but also in the ranks of regional defense, and in the spring volunteers were, for example, actively involved in searching for sabotage groups in Kiev.
The language of Russian propaganda replaces the nasty word explosion (взрыв) with the much softer word pop (хлопок i.e. hlopok). In the word hlopok, which means to pop, the stress is on the last syllable. If weight is on the initial syllable, the word means cotton in Russian. That’s why the Ukrainians jokingly call the explosions in Russia cotton and hope that their own army will deliver cotton to Russian territory.
Stepan Bandera was the leader of the Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN during World War II. He is a controversial figure, considered a national hero in Ukraine and a Nazi criminal in Russia. Bandera is a symbol of the fight against Russia. So it’s no wonder that his name became the nickname of a car used in military operations.
The smoking bottle is known in Ukraine as the Molotov cocktail, coined by the Finns. But when, in February and March, the Ukrainians started to sell fuel bottles, the name wanted to be localized: Molotov’s cocktail was called Bandera’s smoothie.
Russia once established puppet states called the Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Now that the war has spread to Russia’s Belgorod region and there are constant attacks and shootings, the Ukrainians jokingly call the region the People’s Republic of Belgorod and say they will liberate it from Russian tyranny.
Before the Russian invasion, Russia itself and many Western countries believed that the Russian troops would occupy Kiev in three days. It was the other way around. At the beginning of the attack, an adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine Oleksiy Arestovich reassured the people that the war would not last more than two or three weeks. It turned out differently, but the Ukrainians have adopted both terms to mean deadlines that they don’t like.
After the economic recession in Russia was called negative growth, Ukrainians began to obliquely call all bad events for Russia “negatively good”. Consequently, the withdrawal of the Russian army has started to be called a “negative attack” in Ukraine.
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