The article is devoted to the study of verbal identifiers of the enemy, their ranking in terms of normativity / abnormality of public communication is shown, and distinguished are stylistically neutral and stylistically colored language units. Described are the secondary nominations with negative connotations, as well as determining their communicative and pragmatic load. Achieving the goal was facilitated by the use of a descriptive method, methods of observation, contextual‑semantic and complex analysis. The corpus of the research material were national Ukrainian and regional mass media texts from 2022 to the beginning of 2023. It was found that during the specified time period, the linguistic identifiers of the invaders, which do not violate the canons of written forms of newspaper journalism, were activated. The secondary nominations are aimed at the expressiveness of language expression, the expression of contempt and hatred for one’s enemies and the creation of a specific communicative and pragmatic effect, which, although deaestheticizing the journalistic space, does reorganize the established media space, clearly reflecting the social perception of Ukrainians to the realities of the Russian‑Ukrainian war. The linguistic creativity of Ukrainian journalists expresses a combination of pathos and irony, usually employed to humiliate the Russian enemy.

This article addresses the issue of the axiological and derivational specificity of the secondary names of defenders and enemies of Ukraine during the period of the Russian intervention of 2022. Its relevance is due to the need for a comprehensive study of new trends in connotative nomination, as well as the importance of outlining the value orientations of Ukrainians in the critical conditions of the war. The author defines 5 groups of secondary names of persons created during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022: 1) names of soldiers of the Armed Forces; 2) the names of the occupiers; 3) names of Ukrainian politicians; 4) names of politicians from the aggressor side; 5) names of foreign politicians who have supported Ukraine. The author emphasizes that modern Ukrainians use both traditional means of emotional and evaluative nomination, as well as original derivational mechanisms, in particular graphoderivation, a non‐standard combination of word‐forming components, witty convergence of words, etc. For the first time, the author substantiates the connotative derivation as an effective method of verbal psycho‐regulation and worldview self‐presentation of Ukrainians during the Russian aggression, since the names of defenders and enemies in the modern Ukrainian communicative space perform a number of communicative‐pragmatic and psychoregulatory functions: they enable the nomination of persons according to new value criteria, provide an outlet for negative emotions, indicate a cultural and moral superiority over the invaders, define the political position against the background of the enemy’s geopolitical and informational aggression.