Symbolic Appropriation of Time and Space: The Case of Russia's Occupation of Ukrainian Territories

On the map of the Donetsk region in Eastern Ukraine that turned into a scenery for battles resembling in their ferocity those of World War One, one can find two peculiar points constantly reappearing in the news. While that of Soledar does not seem to sow much confusion, the second town named differently in Ukrainian and Russian sources – Bakhmut or Artyomovsk – constantly confuses journalists around the world. So, why does Moscow insist on calling the second town Artyomovsk instead of Bakhmut while keeping for the first one the name of Soledar and not turning back to Karlo-Libknekhtovsk? To answer such questions, the paper examines how, at the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has symbolically appropriated Ukrainian history and territories, i.e., Ukraine's time and space. By relying on a wide range of data (such as toponymic changes, changes in heraldry, and destruction of monumental art), the paper identifies and reconstructs key recontextualization strategies used by Moscow to (re)define the meanings of signs already present in Ukraine's different chronological and geographic context(s). The research lies at the intersection of discourse analysis, multimodality, social semiotics, and geo-semiotics, building on theories of Gunther Kress, Ernesto Laclau, and Emilia Palonen, generating a connection between politics of meaning-making, space- and us-building.