[4] Comparisons of Vladimir Putin's Russian regime and its security services to the evil necromancer Sauron, his domain of Mordor, and orcs were made at least as early as 2009 by a Russian-American blogger and 2012 by Russian journalist Leonid Bershidsky.
[7] Al Jazeera English and Politico included the term as an example of the "new language of war in Ukraine".
[10][11] For example, in early March 2022, in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, demonstrators protested against "orc looting".
The Mayor of Makariv Vadym Tokar [uk] followed him the next day, he stated that the bodies of 132 civilians were found and that they were "killed by Russian orcs".
[13][14][15][16][17] The Spectator compared the "brutality and chaos" of the Russian troops to Tolkien's orcs and noted that the use of this term may not be just an accidental insult, but the result of drawing an analogy between the Middle-earth conflict and the real world.