Peskov called the war a war

Vladimir Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov called the war in Ukraine a war.

“We are at war. Yes, it began as a special military operation, but as soon as this group was formed there, when the collective West became a participant in this on the side of Ukraine, for us it already became a war. I am convinced of this. And everyone should understand this for their own internal mobilization,” he said in an interview with the Argumenty i Fakty newspaper.

He later clarified that this statement of his does not mean that the legal status of what is happening in Ukraine from the Kremlin’s point of view has changed.

“This is not related to any legal changes, it is [still] a special military operation de jure...But de facto - in fact - for us it turned into a war after the collective West increasingly directly increases the level of its involvement in the conflict,” Peskov explained.

However, he stressed that comparing him with anti-war activists, who also call a “special military operation” a war, is inappropriate.

“This is a completely inappropriate comparison, because [the opponents of the war] are not in my context. The word "war" is used in different contexts. This is absolutely [accurate]. Just compare what context I have and what context [in the slogans of opponents of the war],” Peskov added.

The Russian authorities called the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, a “special military operation.” Soon after this, repressive laws were adopted introducing administrative and criminal liability for “discrediting” and spreading “fakes” about the Russian army, with the help of which the authorities introduced military censorship.

Using the new laws, security forces actively persecuted people who used the word “war,” both in relation to what was happening in Ukraine and out of context, for example, for posters or posts with the words “no war.” In some cases, courts even found guilty those who replacedpart or even all of the letters in the word “war” with asterisks.

The authorities reacted in a similar way to the use of the word “peace”, for example, recognizing the slogan “peace to peace” as “discrediting” the army. The words “war” and “peace” also began to disappear from the air of television channels. So, in November 2022, the Muz TV channel suppressed these words in the song of the singer Zivert, which contains the line “We vote for peace, but war is in fashion again.”

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