Linguistic violence

As of 2025, around 8,000 officially con­firmed Ukrainian military personnel and 2,000 civilians are held captive by Russia. Their captivity is not only a site of physi­cal suffering but also a battle­field of identity where language becomes a tool of domi­nation. Testimonies of former war prisoners de­monstrate how daily rituals – such as compulsory memori­zation and per­formance of the Russian national anthem, chanting of patriotic slogans, re­citing poems glorifying Russia, broad­casts of Soviet war songs, and trans­mission of propagandist literature – function as both psycho­logical and physical torture aimed at dis­mantling Ukrainian identity and en­forcing symbolic subju­gation.