Words matter. Deportations are not evacuations.
The war in Ukraine is also a war over words, and words can be weapons, often of deception so we need as communicators to be ever-alert. Take some recent examples from Kherson with, firstly, the BBC’s headline, ‘Russia begins civilian evacuation from Kherson’, then France 24, saying ,‘Pro-Kremlin leader announces mass evacuation of Kherson’, or Sky‘s, ‘Kherson residents line up at ferry terminal amid evacuation calls’.
Note the weasel word. Not evacuations, but deportations – forced removals of Ukrainians from their homes and into Russia. These are war crimes. However, the news outlets echoed the Russian wording and so, without really meaning too, echoed their narrative.
In fairness, the body of the reports do mention the questions over the real meaning of the ‘evacuations’, but the headlines remain with their outsize impact, and the enormity of what is happening is underplayed.
So, the misleading word has had its effect. Imagine if the BBC headline had been, ‘Russia begins civilian deportations from Kherson’ or France 24’s had read, ‘Pro-Kremlin leader announces mass deportations from Kherson.’ A different story, with a different follow-up likely as we focus more on the systematic deportation policy of Russia, to literally change the facts on the ground by forcing Ukrainians into Russia.
The numbers are unclear but huge and the evidence is clear enough that there is no doubt it is happening. Most likely over a million already, including many children. Some is happening in plain sight. Russian officials boasting – boasting – of taking Ukrainian children, supposedly orphans, to be adopted by Russian families. Except they are overwhelmingly not orphans – they are stolen from their parents. Where they are orphans, it is because Russians killed their parents.
This is policy – the reality of Putin’s stated war aim to eliminate Ukraine as an independent entity. Russia has done it before - suppressing national identity through brutality and mass deportations as a means of control – for instance in the Baltics, as well as Ukraine in the 1930s.
Amidst more obvious horrors it is perhaps too easy to overlook the steady deportations, masked with euphemisms like evacuation or invitations to parents in occupied territory to move their children to safety in Russia for ‘holidays’ or ‘vacations’. Except they do not come back.
So, we must not fall for a smokescreen of words and become so distracted by the other crimes that it is not recognised in its full enormity. This is ‘ethnic cleansing’ – a war crime that cannot be left uncorrected.
As we enter a hard winter even some supporters of Ukraine talk about a negotiated outcome which invariably means Ukraine losing territory. But this war is not just land. Can anyone argue Ukraine should give up on its stolen people scattered over Russia? That it should forget the Ukrainian children now facing ‘Russification’ to become good, little Putin-supporting Russians? Can we?
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Crucial comments Mark - thank you. And disappointing to see these news sources parroting the messages. I'm sure some would plead a need to be neutral - but there are ways to describe the actions without standing in either narrative. (I'm with you in the deportation reality, but acknowledge they may feel that's taking an equally unbiased line.)