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So letâs see: Putin is destroying his countryâs economy, has helped NATO to expand, and per @KathyPartdeuxâs last post is now facing the loss of regions at the periphery. And all because he had to shore up support with elderly Know-Nothing nationalists if he wants to keep his kleptocracy running.
Fixed it for them, and all the other media outlets who, for some reason, fail to qualify the phrase âannexed.â
ETA: The WaPo gets it:
Iâm at a loss to understand how martial law can be imposed in areas Russia isnât even occupying. Or how drunk conscripts and press-ganged âsoldiersâ could effectively impose it in areas Russia does occupyâŚ
Iâm also at a loss for why martial law is necessary. I mean, 98% of the population voted in favor of annexation, right? 
That may well be true, at least as far as Kazakhstan is concerned, though Russians will probably regret admitting it when Kazakh leadership stops being scared of raising the issue. Hereâs a thread about the Soviet policies that killed or drove away two thirds of Kazakh population, or about 4 million people, within the first two decades after the revolution:
Is there a legal âannexationâ? If some other territory joins your country it is not an annexation.
Annexation is only legitimate if itâs recognized by other countries or international law. In Crimea Russia used the term âreunification.â
I genuinely havenât encountered the term annexation used outside of imperialist expansion. My first encounter with the term was US imperial expansion into Mexico.
Which is why I think Americans blithely use the term where others donât.
I suspect a lot of Americans encounter it when their cities annex portions of their counties. Because it happens from time to time, American probably encounter it most often in that context.
Most Americans probably havenât the first clue about American imperialism.
That was my point about the usage of the term annexed. It is a term of art of American imperialism and by the operation of hegemony legitimises imperialism.
Only Russian âannexationâ is âillegalâ. When we do it itâs fine.
I may be confused by how youâre approaching this. Inside the US, the term âannexationâ is regularly used to describe a voluntary and legally-defined process by one part of a city or county or other jurisdiction acquires some other part, fusing the two. Most Americans have probably never encountered its use in a historical context, and are probably for the first, or one of the first, times seeing it used in an international setting. [Maybe Germany and the Sudetenland in the history books might be another.]
So, when American media use âannexationâ to describe the process, without prepending it with âillegal,â it creates the impression that itâs a legal function along the same lines as one American city annexing another, which happens enough that many Americans would have heard of it. I just moved from a house that was in âthe annexed are of [city I lived in]â and was regularly referred to as that.
The term itself, used to refer to legal acquisition, goes back centuries.
What am I missing from what youâre trying to convey?
How many ways am I supposed to say that âannexingâ is an intrinsically imperialist term? It is. That Americans donât see that is purely hegemony.
Itâs clear (to me at least) what your opinion of the term is, and what @anon33932455 's opinion of the term is, and that these differ. Itâs not remotely unusual for the meaning of words to have different meanings or implications between regions. Youâve made your point here, letâs not derail this incredibly important topic further (or hey, go open one dedicated to this if youâd prefer.).
Thanks.
Not in the states. A municipality âannexingâ an outlying area is hardly imperialist. Over here, that is the usual use of the term. Nothing âintrinsicâ to it.
(Sorry, should have read the next post first.)
