How To Describe Russian Federation-Ukraine “War” Matters. It’s A Book Of Unknown Chapters With A Known Title: “Awful”
In approximately seventeen hours arrives a moment on Friday, 24 February 2023. One year out from daily routines suspended, structures crumbled, fear normalized, and for those surviving few moments to mourn.
The city of Kharkiv, the second-largest in Ukraine, was the military epicenter of that moment in Ukraine which commenced in the early morning of Thursday, 24 February 2022. How to describe today? Is accurate to write “the war” or “a war” or “this war” or does it matter?
no·men·cla·ture [nə(ʊ)ˈmɛŋklətʃə, ˈnəʊmənˌkleɪtʃə] the devising or choosing of names for things, especially in a science or other discipline: “the most important rule of nomenclature is that the name of a substance should be unambiguous.”
On 24 February 2022, the armed forces of the Russian Federation invaded and further invaded the territory of Ukraine in what Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation (2000-2008 and 2012- ), defined as a Special Military Operation [SMO] then on 22 December 2022 he redefined as a war. The initial invasion by the armed forces of the Russian Federation was in part from the territory of the Republic of Belarus.
The war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine did not commence on 24 February 2022. The roots began their trajectories on 20 February 2014 when the armed forces of the Russian Federation invaded the Crimean Peninsula and the area known as the Donbas Region (Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast).
What happened on 24 February 2022 was a continuation of the war. New on 24 February 2022 was the addition of locations targeted by the armed forces of the Russian Federation- as they simultaneously focused upon pre-existing locations.
In some respects, “the war” or “this war” is a book and what happens during the war are the chapters. What remains known is unknown:
The length of the book given that commercial, economic, humanitarian, military, and political conflicts connecting the Russian Federation and Ukraine are all unlikely soon to be resolved… so yet no final chapter to the book.
If discussing what has happened from 24 February 2022, then “this war” might be best and if discussing the totality of what has happened since 20 February 2014, then “the war” might be best.
There is one descriptive that is appropriate regardless of reflective date…. Awful.
For those impacted in Ukraine, they hope that “the war” and “this war” ends soon. For them, its not “a war” because “a war” suggests a lack of connectivity, ownership, distance. “The war” and “This war” for them is personal and what is happening within the territory of Ukraine defines personal.
