"Special military operation" (also "special operation", and abbreviated as "SMO" or "SVO", or Russian: спецопера́ция, romanized: spetsoperatsiya, Ukrainian: спецопера́ція) is the official term used by the Russian government to describe the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is widely considered a euphemism intended to minimize the invasion and obfuscate the war's original objective of annexing all Russophone regions of Ukraine. Russia bans the use of the terms "war" or "invasion" in referring to its invasion of Ukraine, as well as discussion of the censorship itself.

The expression appears prominently in the public address by President of Russia Vladimir Putin titled "On conducting a special military operation", released on 24 February 2022.

The term "special military operation" has been used in Ukrainian media in specific contexts, generally in scare quotes, to mock or criticise the Russian intervention.

The use of euphemisms to describe military activities was common in the Soviet Union and in the Russian Federation after the collapse of communist rule prior to the invasion of Ukraine; this includes:

In the broader context of international relations, when evaluating the histories of the continents of Africa and North America, the specific labels of the Biafran War as a "police action" and as well as the Korean War as a "police action" have attracted attention over the past several decades.

According to some observers, such as Russian journalist Ksenia Turkova [ru], the purpose of this terminology is mainly to create a perception that war is more benign than it actually is, by softening the wording in official reports and in the media.

In Russian propaganda, the term "special military operation" is the main designation for aggression against Ukraine and is used to replace the definition of "war", which the Russian authorities and state media carefully avoided. On 24 February 2022, 6 hours after the start of the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine, the Russian government tightened censorship by officially requiring the media to use only materials provided by Russian government sources. Subsequently, under pressure from the authorities, many organizations left the country or were closed. The Russian authorities blocked access to a number of Internet resources that refused to comply with the requirements.

In early November 2022, the "rule" was first violated by TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov during a radio broadcast; later on, the events in Ukraine were publicly called "war" by Vladimir Putin, Sergey Lavrov and Margarita Simonyan. In general, Russian authorities and media have tried to avoid the term "war" in the context of Ukraine, instead using it in terms like "gas war" or "information war". In March 2024, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the invasion was a "de jure a special military operation" which, after foreign countries began delivering military aid to Ukraine, devolved into a "de facto war" against the "collective West".