Protecting National Identity: The Role of the Ukrainian Language in Confronting Russian Propaganda

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, the Ukrainian language has become not just a means of communication, but a symbol of the struggle for independence. The Ukrainian language is a marker of national identity and an important tool for building social unity. Despite the positive changes following the adoption of the language law in 2019, challenges remain, in particular due to active anti-Ukrainian propaganda, which Russia uses to undermine the importance of the Ukrainian language and national culture. Linguistic experts from the Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise (Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise) reveal Russia's destructive influence through language, UNN reports.

Language is important

Today, no one doubts that language is the identifier that distinguishes a nation from other nations and ethnicities and shapes its national identity. Of course, the leveling and humiliation of the role of the Ukrainian language, which took place both during the times of tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, negatively affected the Ukrainians' awareness of themselves as a separate nation from the Russians, and formed both in Russian society and among Russian-speaking Ukrainians a superior and even somewhat dismissive attitude towards the language and culture of the Ukrainian people. It is through this systematic leveling of our language that Russia has been trying to destroy us as a nation for many centuries, to uproot the aspirations of Ukrainians to defend their right to exist and protect the interests of their state.

After the restoration of independence, the Ukrainian language began to gradually revive and strengthen its position, but only the adoption of the language law in 2019, which was aimed at protecting the rights of the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians, allowed for the full popularization of the Ukrainian language in various spheres of public life. 

Of course, this law caused a lively discussion and even rejection in Ukrainian society, but the reaction of the Russians was especially sharp, as they immediately began to manipulate the language issue and promote narratives about the oppression of the Russian language and Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the public space of both Russia and Ukraine . 

As early as 2013-2014, Russian propaganda began to actively spread the idea of humiliation of the population of Russian-speaking regions by the Ukrainian authorities and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians, to cultivate intolerance and hostility among the residents of these regions towards those Ukrainians who defended their national identity, and to instill in their minds the desire to separate from Ukraine and the desire to join Russia.  And it was under the pretext of liberating the inhabitants of these regions from Ukrainian "oppression" that the Russian Federation, taking advantage of the socio-political situation in Ukraine at that time, began to position itself as their protector and use the myth it had invented about the "oppression and humiliation" of the Russian language and Russian-speaking Ukrainians to annex part of Ukrainian territory and to undermine and destabilize the situation inside the country. The language also became one of the reasons for the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as even Putin, announcing the beginning of the so-called "svoya" on February 24, argued that it was necessary to protect the Russian language and Russian-speaking Ukrainians both in the temporarily uncontrolled territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions and in Ukraine as a whole.   

Linguistic expertise [1

The need for a forensic linguistic examination most often arises in criminal proceedings and in the activities of law enforcement agencies to detect, investigate and prevent crimes committed through verbal acts. These types of examinations have become especially relevant in the period when the aggressor country launched aggression against Ukraine in 2014, not only armed on the battlefield, but also anti-Ukrainian information war, which began to form a destructive anti-Ukrainian discourse in the public space of Ukraine and abroad, aimed at consolidating narratives in the public consciousness and forming stereotypes and ideologemes aimed at destabilizing both the linguistic and religious and political situation in the country, undermining confidence in the political and military leadership of Ukraine, discrediting mobilization processes, and actively introducing into the minds of the Ukrainian population the idea that the country's foreign and domestic political course is wrong and inexpedient, that it is necessary to stop resistance to the armed aggression launched by the Russian Federation and that it is expedient to return Ukraine to the zone of Russia's political influence. 

The key tasks currently being solved by linguistic experts are to establish the presence or absence in the language materials provided for the study of statements containing signs of certain speech offenses, in particular: calls for illegal actions (to change the boundaries of the territory or border of Ukraine in an unconstitutional way; to violently change or overthrow the constitutional order or seize state power; to genocide of Ukrainians; to wage war, etc. These statements are implemented mainly in the public space, and therefore, of course, influence the mass perception of the world, shaping views on the situation in the country and attitudes towards it in accordance with the thoughts, views and motivations disseminated in them, which is especially relevant in the context of war, where the formation of attitudes towards Russia's armed aggression plays a key role.

Although the war started in 2014, only after the full-scale invasion began did these issues begin to be considered in the context of assisting the aggressor country in the information field, because the narratives disseminated in such broadcast materials correspond to those broadcast by Russian propaganda, in particular, those that became the ideological basis for the armed aggression against Ukraine. For example, justifying the aggression by saying that if Russia had not launched it, Ukraine would have deployed NATO bases, or arguing that Russia was forced to launch aggression to protect the Russian language and Russian-speaking residents of Ukraine and to protect itself from "Ukrainian Nazis" who are only sleeping and dreaming of attacking Russia and occupying its territories.

It is the topic of "Nazism in Ukraine" that has become a favorite theme of Russian propagandists.  Long before the start of the full-scale aggression, Russian propaganda actively spread narratives and messages about the alleged cultivation of Nazi ideology in Ukraine, where Ukrainian patriots were portrayed as followers of Hitler and supporters of Nazi ideology. Again, such narratives worked to justify the aggression, presenting arguments about the necessity and expediency of its conduct  under the guise of "denazification" and "demilitarization" of Ukrainian society.

Thus, Russian propaganda, associating Ukrainian patriotism with Nazism and spreading narratives that Ukraine, with the assistance of the collective West, has turned into a country whose inhabitants hate Russians and everything Russian (the "anti-Russia" project), has used mechanisms that helped convince Russians of the need for war against Ukraine, and  this is why they met the events of February 2022 so calmly. Russian society was prepared for the aggression, and so even when the full-scale war began,  our expectations that they would at least somehow oppose it did not materialize. Russians perceived and probably still perceive this aggression as a "rescue operation".

Features of Russian propaganda

Since 2014, the vector of linguistic research has been mainly focused on analyzing materials from the post-Maidan period, in particular those related to the Maidan events and their discrediting, collaboration, hate speech, and calls for certain illegal actions. Particular attention was paid to the analysis of materials disseminated in the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as statements by figures who had sided with the aggressor country. These materials often contained calls for changing the borders of Ukraine's territory, seizing state power and changing the constitutional order, etc.

The peculiarity of these materials was that they created the illusion of credibility, where consumers of propaganda perceived them as true accounts of events. This misled people, where they did not realize that they were being manipulated. It was at this stage that linguistic experts played a key role, analyzing the content of the messages and the intentions of the addressee to identify speech offenses, such as calls for violence or justification of aggression.

Considerable attention was also paid to cases of pro-Russian propaganda in the Ukrainian information field. An analysis of the content of such information materials showed that the narratives disseminated in them fully corresponded to the narratives disseminated by Russian propaganda, and an analysis of the texts  of the correspondence of the persons involved in their dissemination indicated that they were clearly identified by curators from Russia and that the propagandists received financial rewards for such activities. The themes of such speeches and publications aimed at the Ukrainian audience were aimed at undermining trust in the government, destabilizing Ukrainian society and convincing Ukrainians that Ukraine's political course should be changed in favor of Russia. It was an attempt to convince the public that Ukraine could not exist on its own and that it needed to be "saved" by returning to the sphere of Russian influence. Such messages veiledly undermined faith in Ukrainian statehood and attempted to return it to the orbit of the aggressor's influence.

Today, Russia's destructive information influence is becoming more covert and less pronounced in an overtly pro-Russian tone. Instead, it manipulates patriotism and  targets the most sensitive issues of Ukrainian society in order to destabilize it and undermine confidence in the country's military and political leadership. Anti-mobilization rhetoric stands out among the main narratives that are actively spreading in the Ukrainian information space. The enemy is trying to use the problems that exist in Ukrainian society, including mobilization, problems in the army, the return of captured defenders, etc. to its advantage and undermine Ukrainians' faith in victory and their desire for it.  Although it is Russia that complicates this process, its propaganda manipulates this topic by exploiting the emotions of citizens who are consciously or unconsciously exposed to information influence and sometimes even, trying on the role of bloggers, get involved in this process by distributing relevant information materials on social networks and messengers. 

Of course, the main goal of Russian propaganda today is to destabilize Ukrainian society from within, undermine its morale, sow discouragement and thus weaken the country's ability to defend itself, and such information materials have a corresponding impact on the minds of Ukrainians, because the level of social enthusiasm that existed at the beginning of the war has significantly decreased, and the enemy is actively using this. The result of such information activities is the inert attitude of a part of the population to the events taking place in Ukraine, and one of the key strategies of the enemy, which is to form a negative attitude towards the Armed Forces of Ukraine, discredit the Armed Forces, and spread anti-mobilization sentiment in society, is actively working to reduce the country's defense capability and weaken the resistance of Ukrainian society.

Russian armed and information aggression continues. The linguistic experts of Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise emphasize that it is important not only to identify propaganda materials, but also to form a conscious attitude of citizens to the information space and the information disseminated in it, because language can both revive (save, protect) and lead to decline and destruction. Language literacy is a key element of the country's information security, and every citizen can become a participant in the struggle for truth by learning to think critically and recognize information traps.

In the conditions of war, when every word can have consequences, the linguists of the Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise are working to ensure that language remains a weapon of defense, not an instrument of aggression.