The Vagueness of Vladimir Putin’s Narrative about the Russian-Ukraine Conflict

Abstract

This article deals with Vladimir Putin’s use of vague narrative meanings linked with contemporary newspeak. The author’s focus is on the speech of the President of the Russian Federation regarding the commencement of the so-called special military operation of February 24, 2022. The aim of the article is to identify and analyse the signs of vagueness, a key feature of the Russian authorities’ newspeak. The author analyses the vocabulary used along with its connotations and determines the pragmatic functions of lexical units (ways of using words). The study confirms the hypothesis that Putin used vague semantics to create an ideologized image of reality. This vague language remains largely conditioned by the newspeak’s monovalence. By subordinating semantics to value judgments, the analysed speech offers a specific interpretation of reality that is more important than the meaning of words.