Forced mobilization sparks ‘word of 2024’ in Ukraine
“Busification” has been selected as the word of 2024 in Ukraine by Myslovo online dictionary of modern Ukrainian language and slang. The new term reflects the harsh mobilization practices in the country during the conflict with Russia.
The neologism is formed from the root “bus” in the meaning of “minibus” and the suffix “-ification”, which indicates action or transformation, Myslovo explained in an article on its website on Monday.
The word “busification,” which is used to describe “forced mobilization under an accelerated procedure, was at the center of public attention last year,” the article read.
“The term indicates problems with the mobilization when quantitative indicators prevail over qualitative ones, and human rights (sometimes along with common sense) fade into the background,” it stressed.
Numerous videos emerged on social media throughout the year showing Ukrainian conscription officers grabbing men on the streets and driving them away in minibuses to recruitment centers. There have been reports of injuries and deaths among conscripts who resisted attempts to be mobilized.
Such incidents have been on the rise since in April when the country’s leader, Vladimir Zelensky, signed a new mobilization law in an attempt to deal with troop shortages on the front line. The legislation lowered the conscription age from 27 to 25, greatly expanded the powers of enlistment officers, and introduced more restrictions for draft dodgers.
Myslovo also mentioned several runners up for the Ukrainian word of 2024. One of them was the abbreviation UAU (AWOL), which stands for “an unauthorized abandonment of a unit due to ineffective organization and management of troops, including busification,” the authors of the dictionary wrote. The incidents of UAU “acquired a large-scale and threatening character last year,” they stressed.
Another was “fatigue,” which, according to the article, is “a natural result of the war of attrition waged against Ukraine by Russia.”
One more term mentioned by Myslovo was “negotiations” which has become widely used because of people’s “desire for talks in order to achieve a truce or freeze [in the conflict with Moscow] as a result of exhaustion from the war.”
