There has been some frustration on Twitter among those people who are supporting Ukrainian independence. This stems from the words mainstream international news uses to describe the combatants in the East. That is, when the news describes the armed people who showed up and took over various government buildings to start the war in Eastern Ukraine, they are described as if they somehow have a higher purpose than getting paid to brutalize the population and destabilize Ukraine.
So when CNN, BBC, AP, Reuters, AFP etc. use any of the following, it's disconcerting to the people whose country has been targeted by propaganda and infiltrated according to a Kremlin plan in such a way as to appear this is due to a popular uprising.
"Rebels" is popular, but inaccurate. "Separatists", much the same. "Irregulars" is more accurate, but kind of military-geeky. "Insurgents" seemed to be popular just briefly, but it's overused. "Militants", somewhat mild. "Terrorists" is preferred by Ukrainian officials and which describes the actions of these people who started the war in East Ukraine. However, they are both more and less than that.
Basically, groups of Russian nationalists with some military experience and who thrive on cruelty and indifferent application of violent brutality were recruited by middlemen to fight in Ukraine. They were given the *wink wink* style of backing by various authorities who are allowing then to travel abroad, over the Russian border to Ukraine heavily armed. As these began to violently take over various Ukrainian government buildings and industrial sites, they were cheered on by discontented ex-Soviet pensioners who somehow thought they were going to get their check increased by the Kremlin.
Because this doesn't fit into any real typical schema, mainstream news has for the longest time had the story as "armed disenfranchised ethnicities in eastern Ukraine trying to set up their own independent countries because they're unhappy" because that's the sort of story they know, and it's the type of story they know we know.
Everyone was fooled: this was a geopolitical trick play that caught the world flat-footed and bewildered.
What could possibly be the benefit for Russia in this?
Then, pictures. Maps, showing how Russia depends on Ukraine to act as reliable pipeline operator and arms supplier. Videos, showing a drunken mortar operator cursing and shooting shells from inside a school sorts stadium. Deep-in reporting from Vice, Mashable.
From Russian media, shopped photos and videos of horrible scenes from other conflicts being tagged as happening in Ukraine, rather than where they actually occurred: Syria and Chechnya. Slathered with so much anti-Ukrainian rhetoric coming from Russian officials and their news outlets... well: it could only be a smokescreen for the truth.
As the story unraveled, we see that people who started the war in the East of Ukraine are Russians who laid the groundwork for the what has become a steady infiltration of Ukraine by Russian armed forces. A large depot had been set up just across the border in Russia, in a city called Rostov-on-Don. The paid Russian fighters would be formed up and supplied from this depot. The initial infiltrators had linked up with local Ukrainian malcontents who now aid them, but much more as henchmen, less so as rebels.
But, western news has been calling them "rebels". Because the phrase "infiltrators acting as the leading edge of a stream of Russian fighters comprising a de-facto invasion" is simply too long. Given that, any of these less accurate terms are probably for the best as far as the western audience is concerned, but you can see why it's maddening to the Ukrainian people who are all too familiar with really dirty Kremlin actions in their country. They think these murderers are getting near "freedom fighter" treatment, and that the west has been utterly taken in by Russian propaganda.
But what we are seeing is the evolution of a Kremlin plan to destabilize Ukraine, who are being shown they need to be good little gangsters and do the boss's bidding: never mind your future, deals have been made and plans have been laid.
As this plan proceeded, the stream of arms and fighters created a lake of built-up, heavily armed forces consisting of the armed infiltrators/Kremln operatives, Russian mercenaries, and Russian regular forces.
The primary purpose is to hold open a door for equipment and personnel that would be sent in by Russia and establish a means for discrediting the elected Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko. They are the vanguard of a "just enough" Russian invasion force to apply destabilizing force and topple the newly elected democratic government.
These operatives apparently enchanted bitter pensioners of Ukraine's east into welcoming them. Now the Russian forces launch artillery strikes from apartment blocks onto Ukrainian army targets, demolish homes with rockets in order to get a better view of the battle zone, and any pensioners still left now live in basements, their pensions cut off, caught in the fire between the two sides. Russian soldiers and equipment pour into the area prepared by the vanguard.
It is the case that these paid operatives had their own agendas. The had hoped they would become kings of their little slice of Ukraine. But if course that's how it was framed to then, so they'd clear the way. At least one set of these warlords has been killed, ambushed, by the Russian army, because the hired thugs are disposable in the grander scheme.
A fair summary, synthesized from multiple sources readily available at this point.
So, what you call them, when you only have about 5-10 minutes maximum on the "hour" news (much less minus commercials) that might be devoted to world events? Given all the things going on, maybe 3-4 minutes on this one subject, tops? It took awhile for anyone to figure out that the majority of these operatives really weren't local separatists, or rebels, or insurgents. So they stayed using these brief labels. "Rebels", two syllables. Then, everyone got wise to the plan, so this morphed into "Russian backed rebels" Because they'd already established these term, rebels, separatists. Switching it up more would only confuse things and the news channels would need to explain why: editorial sauce not worth the squeeze.
Not unlike most of my notes on this subject, this is common sense to people following the issuebut nobody reads this so I'm writing for myself, to clarify my thoughts.
At any rate, pressing for more accuracy is always good. Mainstream news might eventually amend this to something even better. But don't get too upset about these words. It's kind of like that pedestrian button on the stop light: you don't know if it's working, but you press it, eventually something changes. If the discussion is out there, awareness is spread.
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