There Is No ‘Civil War’ in Ukraine
Pump ‘Ukraine + “civil war”’ into Google and click the ‘News’ tab and you get dozens of results. Deutsche Welle, Newsweek, CNBC, Huffington Post, The Independent, The Nation, Washington Post, and The Daily Telegraph have all used that phrase to describe what is going on.
As does the BBC, although Euan McDonald, a Kyiv Post Editor, says that’s because the BBC “has to use certain terminology to continue to have access to separatist areas.” Its own reporters covered the initial takeover of government buildings in the Donbas and said that Russian Special Forces appeared to be involved and they have someone like Mark Urban, the Diplomatic and defence editor of the BBC’s lead news show Newsnight, covering in March the presence of Russian troops.
Here Cambridge University’s Dr Rory Finnin (Department of Slavonic Studies) and Dr Thomas D Grant (Faculty of Law) argue that what terms are used by someone as trusted as the BBC is not a minor issue and we should all stop employing euphemisms. Reblogged with permission.
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The war in Ukraine, we are often told, is a “civil war” involving “rebels” fighting the central government in Kiev. Such restrictive, inaccurate terms greatly misrepresent the conflict, which has already killed over 6,500 and displaced at least 1.4m Ukrainians. Too often, the crisis is talked about as if it’s entirely internal to Ukraine, a domestic affair presumably brought on by language politics, identity clashes and historical grievances. Best, therefore, to leave it alone.
Wrong. Ukraine is waging a war of self-defence against an international aggressor - the Russian Federation - whose conduct threatens our collective security. This war is now 18 months old, and we should know better by now.
Face facts
It’s not as if the signs aren’t clear. Recent weeks have seen another intense spike in fighting in eastern Ukraine. Given all the prior sabre-rattling, nuclear threats and general rhetorical brinksmanship, it takes little imagination to see the conflict expanding beyond Ukraine’s borders into EU member states.
Labelling such a crisis a “civil war” serves no purpose of diplomacy or journalistic balance. It is a failure to serve the public interest. The war needs to be described as it really is.
Fundamentally, this conflict was started and is sustained by Russia’s armed intervention, not a Ukrainian civic collapse. In nearly a quarter century of independence, the Ukrainian public’s support for national unity has been stronger than in many long-established states, among them Spain, Belgium and Canada. As Vladimir Putin has since proudly admitted, it was Russian troops in the spring of 2014 who seized Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
The Russian military presence has not gone away. In August 2015, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitors again encountered personnel in eastern Ukraine openly identifying as Russian regular military. These forces continue to lead, train, equip and fight alongside militants advancing Russian neo-imperial and ultra-nationalist ideologies against a government in Kiev espousing respect for democracy, transparency and the rule of law.
To tiptoe around the Kremlin’s armed intervention in Ukraine falls short of the basic standards of war reportage. And it’s absurd to call the Donetsk and Luhansk authorities “rebel” administrations when they would not have come into being and would not continue to function without Russian backing.