This study analyzes a recently published collection of poetry on the ongoing Russo-krainian war. Against a background of Russia’s new oppressive laws concerning the fact that a person can be sent to prison for up to 15 years for spreading “false information” about the war the study aims to investigate the way poets express themselves in the collective work Poeziia poslednego vremeni: Khronika, published in Saint Petersburg in the fall of 2022. The study was conducted through content analysis and close reading of selected poems of the collection. Conclusions that was drawn from the study is that the collective work contains poems with a strong anti-war message. Poets take a clear standpoint in the collection against the Russian regime and the war and oftentimes use a satirical and ironic way to undermine both the war and the Russian regime, which is remarkable considering the risk taken when speaking out against the war in today’s Russia.

On the 24th of February 2022, interstate war on a scale unseen since World War II returned to Europe, causing devastating suffering and loss of human life. As of writing, Ukraine’s ability to demonstrate battlefield success is frequently cited as key to sustain Western political willpower to send military aid. This study aims to test presumptions of a positive feedback loop between military assistance and its successful implementation with a mixed-method approach. Regression models analyze time-series data tracking a year of 33 countries’ military aid commitments to Ukraine using random effects (RE) to control for unobserved, country-specific and varying mediating variables. Based on German aversiveness to military solutions, a least-likely case debate analysis analyzes three Bundestag debates to uncover lawmakers’ justifications for approving or rejecting military aid proposals. Applying a theory-generating analysis framework, battlefield successes are confirmed as recurring arguments used to enforce pro-aid narratives, but do not necessarily overcome factors constraining military aid commitments. The RE regression finds a statistically significant positive relationship between Ukrainian battlefield success and military aid commitments. This raises immense implications for Ukrainian decisionmakers, who may be compelled to prioritize short-term military gains to secure future Western support.

This study aimed to highlight the practice of rhetoric and semiotics used in crisis communication during the Russian-Ukrainian war. On the 24th of February 2022, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine which resulted in the Ukrainian president, Zelensky, giving numerous speeches. In light of Zelensky's background as an actor, several discussions arose concerning his execution of delivery. The analyzed material in this study consisted of three speeches that Zelensky performed regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war, and these were collected from Youtube where the speeches were uploaded. The aim of this study was to investigate how Zelensky utilized rhetorical and semiotic tools in his communication. The investigation was carried out by qualitative content analysis, rhetorical analysis, and semiotic analysis, and the study was based on the theories of semiotics, rhetoric, and crisis communication. These literary tools and vocal speeches helped to answer the research question.The research showed that Zelensky was skilled in delivering his speeches in many ways. From a semiotic perspective, important elements, such as his looks and dress wear, as well as objects shown in the background, were analyzed during his speeches. This resulted in advantages such as a strengthened message and worldwide acceptance. Zelensky used influential rhetoric and distinct crisis communication to establish arguments and messages that awakened emotions in the audience to promote action.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has catalyzed a battle of perspectives and different framings of theconflict between both parties involved. The central figure of the framing on the Russian side hasbeen Vladimir Putin who through his discourse attempted to justify his war efforts by framing theinvasion as a civilizational conflict. Even though, there has been a growing body of literature that hasanalyzed the civilizational shift in discourse of Vladimir Putin. There has not been much theoreticalengagement with the “clash of civilizations” thesis outlined by Samuel P. Huntington (1993). Existing research on this topic remains limited due to the fact that the events covered in this thesis happenedlast year. This paper aims to fill gaps in existing research by analyzing Putin's Annexation Speech delivered on September 30, 2022, during the signing of treaties annexing four Ukrainian regions tothe Russian Federation. Employing Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model (1989;1992;2010), this study provides a comprehensive analysis of Putin's Annexation Speech to ascertain theextent to which Putin utilized the "clash of civilizations". The main thesis of this paper is that Vladimir Putin largely built on the “clash of civilizations” concept in his speech to frame the conflict in aspecific way. Additionally, it is argued that the utilization of this rhetoric is likely to influence theconflict and preserve it at its current scale in the foreseeable future.

Facebook is being used by both Russia and Ukraine as a tool of war, for very different purposes. This demonstrates that the platform no longer serves the sole function of connecting communities together. Existing literature has recognized that social media is being used in the current Russo-Ukrainian war but has yet to conduct comparative and contrastive analyses of Russian and Ukrainian social media strategies and effects. Conducting these analyses will illustrate not only what strategies are being used, but how they can be simultaneously advantageous and disadvantageous for belligerents. By focusing on one platform, Facebook, one can not only learn why it is of crucial importance to both countries, but how the platform might be used moving forward. The findings of this paper suggest that Russian and Ukrainian tactics on Facebook are similar in at least six ways, but on the whole, they differ more than they coincide. The six coinciding tactics include funding, documentation on the ground, narrative spreading, heightening morale, name-calling, and utilization of the platform by leaders. Additionally, the effect of any given strategy varies, with some being successful, and others unsuccessful. Ultimately, these findings can serve as a resource for the national security, social media, political, legal, and academic communities.

In the current state of the world, embassies provide a crucial perspective to world matters as an inspectional office to view the status quo from the front row of the global politics. The embassies as organizations are sensitive and reactive to the events in the global politics, making them organizations worth studying for more profound in the various levels they impact. The critical focus on the international event in this study was the Russian launched full-scale war on Ukraine and how the embassies and their employees reacted to it. The end goal of this study is to report the possible change and its impacts on the core work of the employees inside the embassies and how much they have to adapt and further develop their daily tasks and duties. This study was done from the qualitative perspective by conducting interviews and then analyzing the critical themes of the data and viewing the results in this research problem through the Social System’s Theory, which emphasizes the reactiveness and interdependencies of the different systems that work together and the Social Ecological Model that builds the understanding on three different levels on the world society and how they correlate from one to another. The change in the core work was reported to go from a broader perspective to individual employees and the other way around from employees to the organizations, producing change in multiple levels of the system. It was interesting to find out how individual experiences correlate with the broader worldwide reactions and how the work motivation is experienced in a situation such as this.

The theory of mediatized war implies that any study of conflict that takes place in modern times must also consider the impact of the media within that conflict, especially including new media and communication technologies. Images as visual representations of war have become a part of the information warfare and used to create narratives rooted in the culture of media witnessing (Mortensen) but sometimes entirely divorced from reality (Baudrillard’s simulacrum). The purpose of this thesis was to study images from two Telegram channels, in order to analyze the visual representation of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022. A qualitative content analysis was used on the images, to observe and interpret the visual themes and context of the images. The theoretical framework that was applied to the categories were the theory of the visual, the culture of witnessing in war, and mediatization of war. The results indicate that both channels try to employ features of media witnessing, with a notable difference that the Russian channel presented a more sanitized, gore-less, and staged version of war while the Ukrainian one focused on the casualties and horrors of war. The study contributes to the fields of mediatization of war and visual representation of war by focusing on the previously unstudied material and combining this unique case with a broad theoretical and empirical body of knowledge.

This paper examines Russian broadcast media's disinformation strategies after the Ukraine invasion in 2022. In the past decade, Russian disinformation has been recognized by scholars and policymakers as a danger to European security and order. And it has made it harder for Europeans to access reliable and factual information. However, much research thus far has been conducted when the war in Ukraine was different in proportion, and where disinformation functioned as the foundation for small-scale military action. Now that the war has evolved, disinformation strategies have evolved with it.  In this paper, I applied Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to twenty articles from three internationally oriented Russian broadcasters: RT, Sputnik, and TASS. This revealed two major themes in disinformation narratives: positive Self-representation and negative Other-representation. I demonstrate in this research that Russian disinformation is no longer used to hide Russia’s direct involvement in Ukraine, but that it is used to present justifications for the invasion and further military actions.  Moreover, the research illustrates that the relationship between information warfare and conventional warfare is symbiotic and that contemporary disinformation strategies have been adjusted so that they can benefit from the current circumstances in Ukraine. Ultimately, in this research, I determine that Russian disinformation strategies have evolved since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and are now altered to align with the Kremlin’s aggressive military tactics.

This thesis investigates the portrayal of the Mariupol Theatre Airstrike withinthe Russo-Ukrainian War through a discourse analysis of news articles fromdiverse media outlets in Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, the UK, and theUS. The study employs a qualitative comparative case study approach withinthe academic domain of targeting civilians in war. By applying the lenses oftraditionalist and revisionist perspectives within the theoretical framework ofJust War Theory, the research aims to understand how moral judgements aremanifested in the discourses presented by the media outlets reporting on theMariupol Theatre Airstrike. Notably, the findings reveal a dichotomy in media reporting: Russian mediaadopts a blend of traditionalist and revisionist positions, while Westernmedia also exhibits a blend of both positions, leaning more towards therevisionist perspective. By focusing on the specific case of the MariupolTheatre Airstrike, the study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis thatcontributes to the broader understanding of the complexities of media and theprovide a nuanced understanding on how moral judgments are being exhibited in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

This thesis explores how ontological security shapes Ukrainian memory politics in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Russian invasion's effect on ontological security. Despite their interdependence, ontological security and memory politics are seldomly studied together. Ukrainian memory politics, particularly in the post-Soviet era and after the implementation of the 2015 decommunization laws, have attracted European scholarly attention, as the Russo-Ukrainian (Memory) war has impacted Self and Identity on multiple levels. Furthermore, the thesis highlights the role of memory political measures in creating securitized unitary narratives, emphasizing the significance of memory for stability of Self. While unpopular at first, the decommunization laws emerged from the conflict and enhanced ontological security by solidifying a common Identity.