Historically, in the Slavic languages, it has developed so that they write “on Ukraine” instead of “in Ukraine”, when talking about the location. For example, such a version is considered grammatically correct in Polish and Slovak. And if the Council of the Polish language, after the start of a full-scale war, considers the option “w Ukrainie” to be correct, in Slovak, “na Ukrajinіe” remains the correct variant, since such a phrase is used in relation to one's own country (na Slovensku). However, in Russia they distorted the primary function of the pretext and began to use it for humiliating purposes. This was especially intensified during the full-scale invasion: Russian media now mainly writes “on Ukraine”.

At the same time, a number of Russian dictionaries still present the version “in Ukraine” as the only grammatically correct one. This only emphasizes that the frequent use of the construction “on Ukraine” is exclusively a choice of propaganda.

Thus, Russia mocks Ukraine and its people, pointing out their “inferiority”. With the help of this phrase, propagandists play along with the imperial ambitions of the Russians, since the preposition “on” in relation to the territory is used only if it is part of the state, or an island. In fact, in this way, they want to show that Ukraine is part of Russia and does not have the right to independent existence.

This is the tenth text for the new section “Newspeak”, which Detector Media launched as part of the “Disinformation Chronicles” project. In it,  we will tell and explain new lexemes used by Russian propaganda to distort reality.