This paper focuses on recent developments in Russian political discourse in connection with the events in Ukraine. The main purpose of the investigation is to analyze lexical processes and their distinctive features in political discourse. The data at the center of the analysis come from popular online newspapers, the main corpus of Russian National Corpus, Russian- language dictionaries and a survey conducted by the author. A number of trends emerge from the analysis. First, some words change their meaning (“бандеровцы,” “силовики”), either through expansion or reduction. Second, one finds an array of neologisms functioning as rhetorical figures, such as “крымнаш.” Finally, one finds an abundance of politically charged euphemisms, such as “спецоперация” (instead of “война”). In general, the impact of the situation in Ukraine on Russian political discourse is quite important, but its peak has passed.