Ukraine's president fired his top general on Tuesday after six days of street protests. You could read that sentence in almost any outlet on earth — unless the outlet was RT, where the story arrived pre-translated into Russian. * RT's piece stars “Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky.” Not president — “leader.” Not Volodymyr — Vladimir. The sacked general is Aleksandr Syrsky, not Oleksandr Syrskyi. The protests happen in “Kiev,” not Kyiv. Every Ukrainian in the story got handed a Russian passport on the way to print. * None of this is a typo. It's house style, and house style is the tell. Refusing the Ukrainian spelling of a Ukrainian president's name, in a story about Ukraine's own army, is spelling doing border work — the quiet insistence that Ukrainian names are just Russian names in a costume. * Everyone else used the standard dictionary. CNN: Zelensky “sacks” his military chief “following widespread protests.” NBC: fired “after protests and major rift.” NPR and the Guardian both spell him Zelenskyy, Ukrainian-style, and put the protests right in the headline. Same facts. No passport swap. * RT also threw in a free character assassination, two for one. The outgoing general was “more involved in political intrigues than in commanding troops” and spent his tenure “sweeping problems in the military under the rug.” His replacement was introduced via his failures — “failing to prevent” successful Russian strikes. Whoever commands Ukraine's army, RT's verdict is pre-written: bad at it. * And enjoy the sudden warmth for street demonstrations. Six days of anti-government crowds get covered respectfully as “nationwide protests demanding his dismissal.” Now try to recall RT covering six days of anti-government protests in Moscow with that tone. You can't. Those get covered as Western provocations, when they get covered at all. * Outlets choose words; state outlets choose borders. When the spelling of a first name is doing geopolitical work, you're not reading an article. You're reading a map, redrawn one vowel at a time.