From Blitzcringe to Gasogeddon

Reflecting the changing realities brought on by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian society was rocked that year by an explosion of new words and expressions. Since then, things have settled down a bit: the Russian language, like the Russian people, has adapted to circumstances. Some expressions have persisted; others have fallen out of use.

This issue, we’re focusing our discussion of the Russian language on the most striking neologisms that emerged from the war’s first year, highlighting words linked to the main milestones of that gut-wrenching time.

Antiwar Russians lost no time in coining these terms – which might translate as “almost a swastika” and “semi-swastika” – for the Latin letter Z that cropped up on military hardware and in social media memes in the early days of February’s full-scale invasion. To this day there is no universally accepted explanation for why this letter became a symbol of the Russian armed forces. One of the more convincing theories is that the letters Z and V were simply painted onto military hardware to indicate which military command they belonged to (Z for за́падный or western; V for восто́чный or eastern), only to have these functional scribbles appropriated by propaganda, for lack of any better prowar symbols.