The war against Ukraine began in 2014, when Russia became directly involved in the creation of separatist formations in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. At that time, Russian propaganda, at the direction of the Kremlin, tried to present this as exclusively the people's will. This should have increased the informational noise around the “referenda on self-determination”, which are recognized as illegal, that is, their results are not recognized by other states of the world. Therefore, the new quasi-formations were named “Donetsk People's Republic” and “Luhansk People's Republic”. Such terminology is used by communist states to show in the name the importance of the people for power, although in reality these countries are far from “people's”, for example, the People's Republic of China or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Thus, Russia wants to shift the responsibility for its actions to Ukraine and justify them. They say that the people of Donbas suffered as part of Ukraine and wanted rapprochement with Russia, so Russia heard them and liberated them. The propagandists want to create a false impression of a split within the state and artificially deepen it.

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