Military and political euphemisms in modern Russian mass media

Statement of the problem. Euphemisms neutralize social discourse softening the negative impact of taboo topics that can cause public disapproval and anxiety. At present, military-political euphemisms are widely used in the Russian media which are known for their manipulativeness and tendency to double standards, with the help of which the truth of what is happening is deliberately hidden. The purpose of the article is to analyze euphemism speech strategies and conduct a quantitative analysis that determines the most frequently used euphemistic units for the period of 2020-2022. The methodology of the study. The material of the study is articles published in 2020-2022 in the newspapers “Izvestia”, “Kommersant”, and “Vedomosti”. The paper uses methods of analysis and generalization, analysis of the semantic structure and interpretation of intentional strategies of the euphemisms under consideration, as well as the statistical method. Research results. The main factors facilitating the use of military-political euphemisms in the texts of a number of modern printed Russian media have been established. An interpretation of the probable intentional orientation of the analyzed lexical units is proposed. A quantitative analysis of the euphemisms used in the selected sources has been performed, showing the statistics of the frequency of use of the studied lexical units in the articles of Russian newspapers. Conclusion. As a result of the study, it was determined that one of the most common tasks of euphemistic renaming is to improve the perception of denotation by blurring the semantic component. The most common intention (speech strategy) of euphemisms in the examples under consideration is the veiling of the designated reality, which allows removing psychological tension in order to avoid public condemnation or panic from the audience. The most frequently used euphemisms among those studied were the containment forces and border demarcation.