A "special military operation": This strangely cumbersome word was used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to describe the war on the night his country attacked Ukraine.

A few days later, it was even forbidden in Russia to speak of war when it came to what one's own soldiers were doing in the neighboring country.

Those who do not comply can be imprisoned for up to fifteen years.

The words "attack" and "invasion" were also banned on the occasion.

"Invasion" is a foreign word for intrusion.

Fridtjof Küchemann

Editor in the Feuilleton.

  • Follow I follow

With what the Russian president wants to achieve with his war, he doesn't care that thousands of people are dying, Russians and Ukrainians alike, whether they are soldiers fighting or hiding or fleeing.

He accepts death and suffering and destruction on an almost unbelievable scale - and then he doesn't mind that people in his country call the war by its name?

It is indeed a difference whether there is talk of a war or not, it has an effect, even a triple one: on the soldiers who are sent to this war;

inward, within Russia;

and to the outside.

People have known that war is a terrible situation since they have been at war.

“Surgery,” on the other hand, sounds hospital-like, like something that experts do with extra caution, care, and accuracy so that something is better afterwards than it was before.

At all costs, Putin wants to avoid people in his country wondering whether what is happening in Ukraine is right.

Whether what their president decided was actually a good decision for their country, or whether they shouldn't rather band together and make sure that the killing and destruction stop.

Of course, this is also a question that is important to the soldiers: when they are convinced that the orders they are carrying out are correct, they will fight with greater determination.

That is why Putin not only banned the word war to be on the safe side, but also claimed that the Russian soldiers should not invade Ukraine, but liberate it from the "Nazis".

The word comes from "National Socialism," a terrible political belief that was prevalent in Germany eighty years ago under a man named Adolf Hitler.

She devalued people and primarily agitated against people of the Jewish faith.

It led to the "Holocaust" - the mass murder of six million Jews.

At that time, Ukraine and Russia together belonged to a country called the Soviet Union.

Nazi Germany also attacked this country in World War II and was the common enemy.

We know that Nazis are in power in Ukraine today is a lie, but to many Russian soldiers that could sound like a good reason to fight.

Another claim was that in Ukraine, people would cheer Russian soldiers and greet them with flowers.

But that's not true either.

The people of Ukraine are fighting for their freedom and do not want to live under Russian rule.

The Russian soldiers have already killed many Ukrainians.