Orc (Cyrillic: орк,romanised:ork), pluralorcs (Russian:орки,romanized: orki,Ukrainian:орки,romanized: orky), is a pejorative commonly used inUkraine^[1] to refer to aRussian soldier^[2][3] participating in theRussian-Ukrainian War and Russian citizens who support the aggression of Russia against Ukraine. The pejorative serves to symbolize the inhumanwickedness and brutality of the invaders. It references theorcs, a fictional race of humanoid monsters fromJ. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novelThe Lord of the Rings.^[4]

Comparisons of Vladimir Putin's Russian regime and its security services to the evil necromancerSauron, his domain ofMordor, and orcs were made at least as early as 2009 by a Russian-American blogger and 2012 by Russian journalistLeonid Bershidsky.^[5]

Since the beginning of theRusso-Ukrainian War in 2014, Ukrainians have used the term to as a pejorative for Russian forces.^[5][6] During theRussian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainians began to massively use the term "orcs" in relation to Russian military personnel and theirwar crimes.^[7]Al Jazeera English andPolitico included the term as an example of the "new language of war in Ukraine".^[8][9]

The term is used by Ukrainian senior officials, the military and the media.^[10][11] For example, in early March 2022, in theRussian-occupied city ofMelitopol, demonstrators protested against "orc looting". On April 8, thechairman of the Sumy Regional State Administration,Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, announced that his region was now "free of orcs". The Mayor ofMakarivVadym Tokar [uk] followed him the next day, he stated that the bodies of 132 civilians were found and that they were "killed by Russian orcs".^[12]

Calling Russian soldiers "orcs" has been described as an example ofdehumanization.^{[13][14][15][16][17]}

The Spectator compared the "brutality and chaos" of the Russian troops to Tolkien's orcs and noted that the use of this term may not be just an accidental insult, but the result of drawing an analogy between theMiddle-earth conflict and the real world.^[18]

• The Great War and Middle-earth
• The Last Ringbearer
• Moskal
• Vatnik

• Borenstein, Eliot (2023). "Russian Orc: The Evil Empire Strikes Back".Soviet self-hatred: the secret identities of postsocialism in contemporary Russia. Ithaca London: Cornell University Press.ISBN 978-1-5017-6987-0.

• Anthem of Doomed ("Let's Go Orcs!")—An anti-war song and video aboutRussian invasion of Ukraine byNogu Svelo! andOleg Kuvaev

• 2010s neologisms
• Anti-Russian sentiment
• Pejorative terms for European people
• Propaganda in Ukraine related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
• Ukrainian responses to the Russo-Ukrainian war
• The Lord of the Rings

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