Russia's war is a defensive special military operation; Ukraine strikes are terror

The position holds that Russia's war in Ukraine is a defensive special military operation and that Ukrainian strikes on Russia are acts of terror. Its advocates insist on the term special military operation rather than war because, in the position's own logic, Russians and Ukrainians are one people. The operation is therefore limited in aims and methods, as it would not be against a foreign state, and Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory are treated as attacks within a shared space and described as terror.

It is voiced by 14 Russian outlets across the dispute over Russia's war in Ukraine, over battlefield operations and territorial control, where they frame events as territorial progress, and over the long-range war on energy, industry and infrastructure, where they describe Ukrainian strikes as terror against civilian infrastructure.

The competing position holds that Ukraine's war is a legitimate defence of its sovereignty and deserves full and sustained Western support. The two part on what the war is and whose strikes are legitimate. In recent months Russia and Ukraine have traded drone and missile strikes, US envoys met Putin in Moscow, where he restated his demands, and then went to Kyiv, and President Trump urged Ukraine to stop attacking Russian diesel refineries.