How a Realist-Constructivist Theory Can Contribute to Understanding the 2014 Ukraine Crisis Abstract Realism has been the predominant paradigm for analysing Russian foreign policy in recent times, however, it can sometimes appear lacking in convincing power. Constructivism offers some explanation for the motivation behind policy, however, again appears lacking in convincing power alone. Realist-constructivsm has been suggested to bridge the gap, as it were, between traditional notions of power, and cultural influences. The main argument for realist-constructivism is that some of the basic principles of realism must have a constructivist base, for example, in order to define the 'us' and 'them' in international politics and to determine with whom one is competing for power and influence, there first must be an understanding of how one defines the 'us'. This analysis examines the realistconstructivist theory as put forward by Barkin (2004; 2010), analyses its advantages and disadvantages, and seeks to view the Ukraine crisis of 2014 through a realist-constructivist lens, hoping to contribute something to the still young and developing discussion around a realist- constructivist theory. Keywords Realist-constructivist theory; NATO; national identity; Ukraine; Crimea; the EU; 2014; annexation

The association agreement between EU and Ukraine includes visa liberalization, which brings concerns about the capability of absorbing the increasing migration of Ukrainian citizens in the Czech Republic. The theses aims at showing realistic state of affairs especially through statistics and interviews with members of crucial interest groups connected to migration process. The text is demonstrating that number of Ukrainians in the Czech Republic is significantly raising, but we cannot consider this raise as intractable. The increase directly connected with visa liberalization can be clearly demonstrated at the number of tourists. Looking at the number of asylum applications, growth was not noted which is considered as sign of well-managed liberalization of migration. Significant changes cannot be seen also in the statistics of illegal migration. Nevertheless, members of foreign police agree that they observe increase of illegal Ukrainians but do not have the capacities to arrest them and register as illegal in the statistics. Visa liberalization is not the only reason of the increase of Ukrainians in the Czech Republic. Major influence is the overall socio-economic situation of both countries and especially extremely low unemployment in the Czech Republic, which creates pressure to the employers...

In this thesis, the issue of language policies and nation-building as seen by a constructivist perspective are studied, the studied case being the Post-Maidan Ukraine. It is argued that the ruling elites of Ukrainian society are persuading the members of minority-language populations to re-categorize themselves according to the blueprint of national and linguistic identities that the elites are presenting. The thesis studies the responsiveness of the populations of Kyiv, Dnipro, Uzhhorod and Odesa to the identity-building efforts. To assess the success rates of the endeavour, the method of linguistic landscape analysis and a survey among students of Czech in Ukraine are employed. In the linguistic landscape analysis, the behaviours of issuers of official, commercial and informal messages appearing in the studied cities are observed. Looking at the language composition of these signs, the overall responsiveness of the populations towards the official language policies, and, by extension, towards the nation-building efforts overall, are assumed. The survey then provides supporting evidence by asking the respondents questions about their attitudes towards the language legislation and stance on the issue of language use in the country. It is observed that in informal contexts, the messages often revert...

Finland is nowadays a prosperous Nordic country, a member of the European Union, supporter of the EU-Russian relations and is one of the most developed economies in the world. Finland still has a unique role in maintaining friendly relations with Russia and therefore we can assume that Finland does not pursue NATO membership, because it would most definitely be perceived as threatening by the Russians. The Ukrainian crisis changed views of many people on Russian foreign relations and made the public, politicians and entire countries question what is Russia capable of and whether it should be perceived as a threat. Because of the Ukrainian Crisis, opinions in Finland are changing and developing and the NATO membership is seen from a brand new perspective and the much treasured policy of nonalignment is being reconsidered as well. That is the issue that I am going to research and examine in this thesis. I will describe changes in public opinion on NATO membership and general safety of Finland, because this public opinion has varied over the last decade and the Ukrainian crisis was the reason for these changes. In order to find answers to these issues, I performed a complex analysis of information coming from several sources, as well as results of research of public opinion and interviews with Finnish...

This master's thesis examines the first decade of independent Ukraine in terms of language policy and political organization. It purports to show the impact that Ukraine's political independence had on the national and language situation in the first years of its existence. The first part of the thesis deals with the demographic, national and political state of affairs at the outset of the examined period, in 1989. The second part provides an analysis of the most important laws and other official documents that were supposed to influence further developments in the language policy. The third part deals with the actual evolution in individual spheres of life, namely education, media, bilingualism, administrative and territorial structure, and demographic changes. The conclusion answers two questions, firstly, "How does the reality differ from the plans in the official documents?", and secondly, "What changes can we notice in the language and territorial issue of Ukraine after the first decade of its independence?"

This thesis deals with Russian and Ukrainian foreign policy. The challenge is to analyse the attitude of Russia and Ukraine towards NATO and CIS and the role of both States in the shaping of other groupings in the post-Soviet space. Russia was claiming to get back its super power status and NATO enlargement considered as threat. On the other hand Ukraine was seeking security guaranties and partners to counterbalance the imperial ambitions of Russia. CIS and some other groupings in the region posed for Russia instruments of economic and political domination of post-Soviet space. On the other hand, Ukrainian attitude in relation to CIS integration under the Moscow's leadership was very restrained and vigilant. Kiev initiated other groupings independently from Moscow. In this work were preferred descriptive and empirical analytical techniques. There was used method of comparison more precisely double case study. Geopolitics was chosen as theoretical framework. The results of comparison help us to make a conclusion about the impact of Russian and Ukrainian policy in relation to NATO and CIS towards each other and post-Soviet space. There were found fundamental differences between Russian and Ukrainian attitude towards NATO and CIS or rather post-Soviet space. In these cases the differences resulted...

Extensive emigration from post-soviet countries is caused mainly by unfavorable economic and social conditions, which is the source of the preporderant economic motive of Ukrainian and Moldovan migrants to another country. Mainly for the purpose of easier immigration to the Czech Republic, social networks and links are being built and maintained in geographically dispersed places. Their indispensability in the migration process lies in obtaining information, access to valuable resources and retention of psychological support. Due to the expansion of communication technologies and increasingly favorable conditions for travelling, social networks and ties are gradually developing. The submitted diploma thesis explores the influence of social networks on international migration and the success of the integration of Ukrainian and Moldovan migrants in the Czech Republic. The social networks of migrants are tested in terms of their intensity in the country of origin and in the destination country, and at the same time the financial remittance and transnationalization behavior is targeted. The impact of social networks on migration is analyzed by a quantitative method based on the answers from a questionnaire survey with a selection using the ,,snow-ball" method (data for this research were obtained and...

The work presents competing discourses around bilingualism that surround fluctuating national identity in Ukraine. The use of Ukrainian and Russian languages has been for a long time a highly sensitive issue, repeatedly taking shape as an instrument of political campaigns and overt propaganda, and continues to be a subject of debates and tensions. Crimean crisis and the war in the East of Ukraine are not merely clearly-cut results of Russian military strategy and aggression. Other poignant factors are: long-lasting unresolved language issues, artificially imposed linguistic monism, and conflicted national identity that constituted a conflicted form of life characteristic to Ukraine. They are attributable to centuries of particular historical development and bewildering post-Soviet heritage but constructed through Russian political propaganda and forced Ukrainian policies toward exclusion. This work explores national identity through the language situation in Ukraine to gain a holistic grasp of how exclusive Ukrainian language legislation influences the nation's cultural-linguistic settings. The given study claims that the development of the linguistic landscape in Ukraine climaxed in a setting of de jure monolingual, yet de facto bilingual country: the new language legislation requires all...

This thesis dealt with the degree of the EU on Slovak foreign policy in three particular areas, namely in relation to Slovak political stance to international status of Kosovo, Slovakia's foreign policy towards Ukraine and Slovak political stance to possible membership of Turkey in the EU. The research was carried out on on the basis of a content analysis of official documents, in which the focus was on codes belonging to the different intensity of Europeanization, national influence, NATO's influence and influence of other factors on Slovakia's foreign policy agenda. Using the percentage agreement method and Cohen's kappa method, it was possible to mark the obtained research results as sufficiently reliable. Therefore, research hypothesis which assumed that Slovak foreign policy is europeanized in all three research areas, could be rejected. It follows that the influence of the EU on Slovak foreign policy was not confirmed within the three examined areas.

This thesis analyses how three television stations - Czech ČT24, Russian RT and American CNN - informed about the Crimean crisis which took place in Ukraine in 2014. The first part of the thesis presents theoretical approach and mentions previous similar studies, which focused on examining of medial coverage and framing of war conflicts. Next chapter describes the history of Ukraine briefly and underlines events which could have caused the Crimean crisis. Thereafter the thesis introduces the timeline of the Crimean crisis. In the next part the thesis analyses sources, topics and keywords which appeared in the news of ČT24, RT and CNN. It also describes how particular people and events were visually covered. In the final chapter the approach of the three examined television channels is compared.