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"Where have you been for eight years?", "Where have you been for the last eight years?", or "Why have you been silent during the past eight years?" is a rhetorical question widely used by Russian propaganda in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in support of Russia, mainly pointing out what Ukraine has been doing to the Donbas during the war in Donbas (2014–2022),[1] and that the Russo-Ukrainian War has been ongoing since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea.[1][2][3] It has been described as Russian pro-war propaganda.[1][4]
 | You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (March 2022) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
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- Russian: Где вы были последние восемь лет?, romanized: Gde vy byli posledniye vosem let?, lit. 'Where were you the last eight years?'
- Russian: Почему вы восемь лет молчали?, romanized: Pochemu vy vosem let molchali?, lit. 'Why were you silent for eight years?'
- Ukrainian: Де ви були останні вісім років?, romanized: De vy buly ostanni visim rokiv?, lit. 'Where have you been for the last eight years?'
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Russian president Vladimir Putin's televised address on 24 February 2022 referenced the eight years that had passed since 2014 multiple times.[5]
For eight years, for eight endless years we have been doing everything possible to settle the situation by peaceful political means. Everything was in vain.[a] ... The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime.[b]
Russian nationalists started using this phrase as their response to the "#НетВойне" ("No to war") hashtag, accusing anti-war protesters of having no concern for Russian-speaking people in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Later on, it was promoted by media celebrities within Russia, such as Nikolay Baskov, Tina Kandelaki, Masha Malinovskaya, and Dana Alexandrovna Borisova.
According to social anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova, this argument is so common in Russian culture because it is much easier to point out the actions of an enemy instead of one's own actions, denying any form of guilt. It is also part of "whataboutism", which was a common tactic in Soviet propaganda, similar to "And you are lynching Negroes".[7]
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Ukrainian journalist and TV presenter Kateryna Osadcha said that "Russia has been tearing Ukraine apart for eight years".[4]
On 3 March 2022, Pavel Kanygin, a Russian journalist, wrote his responses[clarification needed] for the "where have you been for eight years" questions, which also explained more about the separatists in Donbas.[1]
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More than 3,000 civilians were killed as a result of the war in Donbas (2014–2022), but there is no evidence to support the claim that Ukraine committed the genocide of Russian-speaking people or ethnic Russians in Ukraine.[8] Before Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the intensity of the hostilities in the Donbas had been steadily declining since the signing of the Minsk agreements in February 2015.[9] For example, according to Ukrainian authorities, 50 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in clashes with Donbas separatists in 2020.[10]
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Related topics
- 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine
- Accession of Ukraine to the European Union
- Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation
- Anti-war protests in Russia (2022–present)
- Derussification in Ukraine
- Geopolitics of Russia
- International recognition of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic
- Krasovsky case
- Media portrayal of the Russo-Ukrainian War
- Russian imperialism
- Russian irredentism
- Russian nationalism
- Ukraine–NATO relations
- War crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Related literature
- "Address concerning the events in Ukraine", 2022 speech by Vladimir Putin
- The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, 1997 book by Aleksandr Dugin
- "On conducting a special military operation", 2022 speech by Putin
- "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", 2021 essay by Putin
- "What Russia Should Do with Ukraine", 2022 article by Timofey Sergeytsev
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