Putin’s Orwellian Doublespeak

If you’ve been paying attention to how Russian President Vladimir Putin talks about the war in Ukraine, you may have noticed a pattern. Putin often uses words to mean exactly the opposite of what they normally do.

He labels acts of war “peacekeeping duties.”

He claims to be engaging in “denazification” of Ukraine while seeking to overthrow or even kill Ukraine’s Jewish president, who is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.

He claims that Ukraine is plotting to create nuclear weapons, while the greatest current threat of nuclear war appears to be Putin himself.

Putin’s brazen manipulation of language is drawing attention. Kira Rudik, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, recently said of Putin in a CNN interview:

“When he says, ‘I want peace,’ this means, ‘I’m gathering my troops to kill you.’ If he says, ‘It’s not my troops,’ he means ‘It’s my troops and I’m gathering them.’ And if he says, ‘OK, I’m retreating,’ this means ‘I’m regrouping and gathering more troops to kill you.’”

Rudik’s comments about Putin remind me of another set of claims: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance…