This study explores the ongoing coverage of the war in Ukraine with special attention paid to how media editors of 15 most prominent mainstream outlets in Poland, a country known for its pro-Ukrainian stance, neutralize Russia’s justifications for the invasion. It uses a special-purpose corpus of self-collected online publications released between February 2022 and June 2024. With both automated and manual methods of analysing collocates of such keywords as ‘Kremlin’ (753 instances), ‘special operation’ (139) and ‘NATO’ (1162), the study identifies a range of thematic domains, salient linguistic framings and rhetorical devices. It documents specific discursive strategies – demystification, delegitimation and debunking – used by editors to recontextualize Russia’s claims to wage preemptive war in Ukraine. The results show how editors use language to gauge audiences’ understandings of war and reactions to it. The findings can be used for journalism training or for raising critical media literacy and resilience to disinformation.
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