A research project titled The Ethnographic Dictionary of War, published in June by anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova and psychologist Yuri Lapshin in collaboration with ECHO, the Russian Anti-War Committee, analyzes nearly 7,000 letters, messages, and communications between Russian soldiers and their families, revealing a harsh reality of the soldiers sacrificed by Putin.
The documents were accessed following a leak of information from the digital platform used for registering calls to the Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia, between April and September 2025, reports Kyiv Post.
Although the commission is presented as independent, the authors note that, being appointed by the State Duma, “many question its impartiality”.
The study shows that almost three quarters of the reports sent to the commissioner were related to the war in Ukraine. Researchers have identified nearly 80 expressions of “modern trench slang“, an informal language born in the trenches, composed of Soviet euphemisms, prison slang, ironies towards authorities, and technical metaphors.
Among the terms used are: “200” – for a soldier killed in action, “sent on delegation” – for deployment to the front, “ptichka” – (bird) for drone, and “ptichnik” – (birdman) for the drone operator. The authors emphasize that the development of such a language helps soldiers cope with stress, bond, and understand the system they live in, but the vocabulary reveals the brutality of a reality that official propaganda hides.
An emotional aspect of the study is the fact that not only soldiers use this slang, but also their mothers, wives, sisters, and children. The language of the front has contaminated the entire Russian society, and words born in the trenches have become part of everyday conversations. The documents describe life at the front in detail: trenches, hospitals, camps, tense relations with commanders, abuses, corruption, torture, humiliations, and fraudulent payments, illustrating the “reality of the world in which the war participants live”.
Details, HERE