Words influence the way we see the world. In 2015, we warned that the language used by the west to describe Russia’s armed intervention in Ukraine was a jumble of euphemism and understatement that failed to serve the public interest.
The problem hasn’t gone away. Today there may be a reckoning in the west with how political and business interests have long accommodated the barbarism of Vladimir Putin’s regime for profit and short-term gain. But there is one form of appeasement that we have yet to confront. This appeasement comes in the form of our words.
Check the headlines about Ukraine. How many of them bend over backwards to avoid even mentioning Russia? Instead, they speak of the “Ukraine war” or “Ukraine conflict”. We read about “Ukraine at war” or “the situation in Ukraine”. Even public gestures are curiously neutral – such as the moment of silence and statement of solidarity for the people of Ukraine observed at the 2022 Academy Awards, which failed to acknowledge the very state responsible for unleashing death and destruction in the heart of Europe.
