Russian application of deception in warfare has an extensive history. A lot of previous research has explored both its application and development through different historical conflicts. However, the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea has raised a debate that challenges the classic application of Russian deception methods. Nevertheless, many researchers claim that Russia continues to use traditional methods of warfare and deception, albeit adapted to a modern context.   This thesis explores these claims by a concrete comparison of the application of Russian deception methods during the annexation of Crimea with a successful historical Russian deception operation, the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This is done by a comparative case study, which breaks down both cases with theoretical support from Barton Whaley's theory of deception. The study validates claims that traditional Russian deception methods are being applied in a contemporary context. What has changed, however, is how the different types of deception mutually support one another and are utilized to achieve synergy effects.

This essay deals with the phenomenon of using football in order to exert influence over the domestic policy on the particular case of Russia after Vladimir Putin assumed the office of the president in 2000. Football in the Soviet Union and Russia developed in close interaction with politics almost through its entire history. However, the form of instrumentalization and the key players who had a chance to intervene into the football world were changing along with the changes of political and economic environment. The ascension of Vladimir Putin into the presidential office and his intervention into the existing power of oligarchs meant a major shift towards a stronger and active role of the Kremlin also in the process of using of football clubs. The analysis of particular cases along with the fact that most of the Russian professional clubs are currently owned directly by the state make the author of this essay to formulate the concluding thesis that after the consolidation of Putin's regime it is Kremlin who became the main player also in respect to the instrumentalization of football. This perspective means a shift in the research into the interaction of Russian football and the politics in which the stress was laid primarily on the role of oligarchs (process of "Berlusconization") so far. The...

In the information age, media has come to be recognized as a credible mean and foreign policy tool to pursue soft power. Authoritarian states like Russia are competing in the realm of ideas through state-funded news outlets such as Russia Today (RT). This by reaching out to global and foreign public spheres and by reporting on an alternative reality of events, issues and problems. This thesis studies the role of the media news outlet RT as a mean to promote Russian soft power. This with a focus on how the channel attempts to persuade and attract an international audience based on the construction of a compelling narrative. To approach this theme empirically, a media frame analysis is conducted utilizing five news frames including; morality, human interest, responsibility, conflict and economic consequences. The overall results suggest that RT attracts and persuades largely by providing an alternative Russian perspective on events, issues or problems. It attracts by appealing both in the direction of the western- and eastern world. It appeals to the west by emphasizing how the West needs Russia to find answers to the pressing issues in global politics. It appeals to the east by suggesting an alternative model of development. RT attempts to persuade are made through the construction of counter-narratives which delegitimizes the Western approach in international affairs. The channel devotes efforts to boost these narratives by selective news porting and handpicking statements made by intellectuals from the perceived “other” western camp.

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...

No description available.

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.

This diploma thesis points out differences in the reporting methods of CTK and CT, the two public service's media, regarding the Ukrainian crisis. The theoretical part of the thesis focuses on both of these media's properties with emphasis on their foreign coverageas well as related medial terms' definitions. One chapter is reserved to cover Ukraine as a state and its political history since the SovietUnion's disintegration through to 2014 and the Ukrainian crisis development; further studying the relationship between Ukraine and the Russian Federation resulting in the crisis in 2013. In the practical part of the thesis quantitative and qualitative methods are used to determine how much attention and screen-time both media dedicated to the crisis, which parties were given opportunities to comment and identify other sources of information. Keeping in mind the fact that CT had four reporters on site at it's disposal, the thesis tries to find out how big of an influence that had on the overall production, processing and tone of the television news and to what degree the production of both media agreed or diverged.

西元2014年3月16日原屬於烏克蘭的克里米亞自治共和國舉行了全民公投， 其最終的結果，超過九成的選民贊同加入俄羅斯聯邦。就筆者從俄羅斯相關的外交政策觀察中發現，兼併克里米亞的積極性與主動性原因不僅僅只是為了領土的增加，更多的考量是在於地緣利益的維持與獲得。因此本文將從地緣政治的觀點切入，企圖了解克里米亞半島對於俄羅斯的地緣重要性為何？俄羅斯在2014年克里米亞事件中所扮演的角色？收回克里米亞後對於俄羅斯的地緣政治產生何種影響？ 收回克里米亞的迫切性起因在於2013年底烏克蘭親歐盟示威，俄羅斯明顯感受到來自於歐盟和北約不斷地東擴的壓力，因此不得不做出回應，以俄裔人口為居多的克里米亞成為俄羅斯發揮其影響力的首選之地。在2014年克里米亞事件中，俄羅斯的態度和作為符合國際關係中「攻勢現實主義」的圭臬，即強調大國會不斷尋求機會採取攻勢獲取最大權力，俄羅斯的主動出兵和強硬態度便是最好的佐證。 最後，本文認為2014年克里米亞事件後，即便國際社會普遍撻伐俄羅斯的行為，並祭出經濟制裁懲罰性手段，然而對於自身俄羅斯而言，不僅成功收回克里米亞，還重獲地緣政治利益，可以說是蘇聯解體後，地緣競逐中最大的一場勝利。 / On March 16, 2014, a referendum was held in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which was one part of Ukraine. The final result was over a 90 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83.1 percent voter turnout. According to the author’s observation on some related foreign policy of Russia, the cause of the initiative and motivation of annexing Crimea is not only increasing its territory but also retaining and obtaining its geopolitical benefit. Therefore, this paper will focus on the concept of geopolitics to understand what Crimea is, why it matters, which role does Russia play during the Crimean crisis of 2014, and what will be the influence after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In the end of 2013, Euromaidan in Ukraine was the main reason for Russia to take back Crimea urgently. Due to the expansion of EU and NATO to post-soviet countries, Russia had no choice but to react to the threat. Consequently, Russia tried to make a great impact on the status of Crimea, where ethnic Russians are dominant. In the event of the Crimean crisis of 2014, Russia’s attitude and behavior were in accordance with the principle of “Offensive Realism”, that is to say the great power emphasized on a non-stop way in search of opportunities in order to obtain the maximum authority, and Russia spontaneously sent military troops with a solid attitude to handle the situation as the best proof of evidence. Finally, the study shows that after the Crimean crisis of 2014, even though lots of countries in international community blamed it on Russia, and imposed economic sanctions on Russia for its illegal annexation of Crimea, Russia has successfully retaken Crimea and regained the geopolitical advantage. It was the biggest victory of the geopolitical competition since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Cette thèse concerne l’étude de la structure géologique de la Crimée orientale et de son prolongement en mer, le fossé Sorokin, dans le but de reconstruire l'évolution tectonique de la marge, inversée, au nord de la Mer Noire Orientale. Ces recherches ont été initiées car l’âge Trias supérieur-Jurassique inférieur des roches les plus anciennes, de type flysch, seraient en fait Albien (Crétacé inférieur) soit 60 à 110 millions d'années plus jeune. Force d'observations sur le terrain, de datations micropaléontologiques, d’une analyse structurale, avec une recherche des paléo-champs de contraintes, d'une analyse de profils de sismiques réflexion de la marge, notre étude permets de réactualiser et de clarifier la géologie de la Crimée orientale. Les principaux résultats de cette thèse sont les suivants : 1) grâce à nos nouvelles datations, les sédiments turbiditiques du Crétacé inférieur ont une plus grande répartition géographique; 2) deux formations de flysch ont été identifiées, l’une du Crétacé inférieur et l’autre du Trias supérieur-Jurassique Moyen (Groupe Tauric); 3) une carte structurale de la Crimée orientale a été réalisée qui permet de mettre en évidence une phase d'extension durant le Crétacé et deux phases compressives durant le Cénozoïque ; 4) ces deux phases compressives (Paléocène-Eocène inférieur et Oligocène-Pliocène moyen) sont confirmées par l’interprétations de 8 profils sismiques en mer qui ont été corrélés avec un forage (Subbotina 403) ; 5) la réalisation de deux transects Terre-Mer permettent de comprendre les structures liées à l'inversion de la marge ; 6) l'analyse des paléo-champs de contraintes révèle plusieurs régimes tectoniques liées aux développement des structures tectoniques; 8) finalement cette thèse propose un vision nouvelle de l'évolution tectonique de la marge nord de la mer Noire orientale, qui subit une inversion depuis le Paléocène, en présentant des cartes de reconstitutions de son évolution depuis le Trias supérieur. / This study is focused on the main structural features of the Eastern Crimean Mountains (CM) and of their closest offshore, with a purpose to derive and reconstruct the tectonic evolution of the northern inverted margin of the Eastern Black Sea. This study was inspired because the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic age of the oldest exposed flysch-like rocks (so-called Tauric Group) “was” defined as 60 to 110 my younger, namely as the Albian (Middle Cretaceous).The aim of this thesis was to obtain by field observations, new dating of rocks, structural analysis, stress-field analysis and seismic interpretation allowing reconsidering the geology of the CM. The main findings of the thesis are: (1) the Lower Cretaceous sediments have a much wider spatial distribution in the Eastern CM; (2) the presence of two flysch units of different age: the youngest flysch unit of the Early Cretaceous age and the oldest, the Tauric Gp and Middle-Jurassic flysch; (3) the structural analysis in the Eastern CM resulted in new structural geological map of the Eastern CM and showed the evidence of extensional tectonics during the Cretaceous and of compressional structures during the Cenozoic; (4) two-stage compression: 1) during the Paleocene-Early Eocene and 2) during the Oligocene-Middle Pliocene were confirmed by interpretation of seismic lines offshore, correlated with the “Subbotina-403” well; (5) both geological and geophysical data in the on-and- off shore transects evidence connection of structures in the northern inverted Black Sea margin; (6) the paleostress analysis of the brittle fault-slip data allow distinguishing of several tectonic regimes responsible for the developments of main tectonic structures of the study area; (8) finally, this thesis presents a new vision of the tectonic evolution of the northern inverted part of the Eastern Black Sea illustrated with paleotectonic maps providing the reconstruction for each main stage of its geological history since the Late Triassic.

Under det senaste decenniet har Ryssland nyttjat det militära maktmedlet mot forna sovjetstater i syfte att uppnå politiska målsättningar. Skälen till detta är troligtvis flera, där Natos och EUs expandering till Rysslands närmaste intressesfär antas utgöra en väsentlig drivkraft. Den ryska interveneringen i Georgien år 2008 och annekteringen av Krim i Ukraina år 2014, var ur ett svenskt strategiperspektiv oväntade samt överraskande händelser som bidrog till djupgående förändringar av den svenska säkerhetsstrategin. Denna undersökning syftar till att analysera om och i så fall hur, dessa två ryska strategiska chocker har påverkat svensk säkerhetsstrategi under de senaste tio åren. Undersökningen ämnar även ge en ökad förståelse för utformningen av svenska säkerhetsstrategier, dess bakgrund, påverkansfaktorer och förhållande till ryskt geopolitiskt agerande. Denna kunskap skapar även förutsättningar att bättre förstå den aktuella strategin, generella säkerhetspolitiska ageranden likväl som den utgör ett bidrag till analys av framtida strategier. Denna fallstudie nyttjar en referensram som utgår ifrån Jacob Westbergs modell av strategins komponenter, miljö, mål, medel och metod. Genom textanalys studeras fyra analysenheter bestående av officiella säkerhetsstrategier och försvarspropositioner. Undersökningens första analysenhet utgörs av En strategi för Sveriges säkerhet från år 2006 och den sista analysenheten är Nationell säkerhetsstrategi från år 2017 med dess delrapport från år 2018. För att ytterligare berika empirin har även tidigare forskning inom ämnesområdet använts, likväl som rapporter från Försvarsberedningen och Försvarsmakten. Undersökningens slutsatser visar att de två strategiska chockerna har haft en betydande påverkan på svensk säkerhetsstrategi under det senaste decenniet. Chockerna har bidragit till ett skifte från internationella operationer, en solidaritetsdoktrin och ett frivilligt anställt försvar, till ett ökat fokus på närområdet, en form av Östersjöallians samt upprättandet av ett totalförsvar med värnplikt. Rysslands intervenering i Georgien hade dock inledningsvis en blygsam påverkan i jämförelse med annekteringen av Krim, som orsakade ett paradigmskifte inom svensk säkerhetsstrategi. Det framstår som att den första chocken delvis absorberades av en övertro till europeisk säkerhet i kombination med Sveriges 200-åriga tradition av fred samt den rotade synen på neutralitet och alliansfrihet. Den initialt absorberade chocken visar sig dock senare utgöra en förstärkare till den andra chocken, vilket leder till en helomvändning i säkerhetsstrategin. Följderna kan ses i återupprättandet av totalförsvaret, nya militära förmågor, ökad nationell försvarsförmåga och etableringen av en ökad permanent militär närvaro på Gotland. Det innebär även fördjupade bilaterala samarbeten med Finland, USA, NATO samt de nordiska och baltiska länderna. Svenskt fokus kanaliserades nu främst till två metoder, att kunna möta ett militärt väpnat angrepp mot Sverige, samt en form av alliansstrategi med främst Finland och USA i östersjöområdet. / Over the course of the past ten years, Russia has used its military means against former Soviet states in an effort to achieve its political objectives. The explanations behind this behavior are probably several, but NATO’s and EU’s expansion to Russia’s proximity and area of interest could very well have played a significant role. The Russian intervention in Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014 were from a Swedish strategy perspective, both unexpected, surprising and led to severe changes in Swedish security strategy, thus by definition being strategic shocks. This study aims to analyze if and, in that case how two Russian strategic shocks have affected Sweden’s national security strategy over the course of the past decade. Thus, in doing so it contributes to an increase in understanding the development of Swedish security strategy, its underlying causes, background and relation to Russian geopolitical behavior. This knowledge will also help to better understand the current strategy, political security actions in general as well as a contribution to future analysis of strategies. This case study utilizes a frame of reference based on Jacob Westberg’s model of a strategies components, environment, ends, means andways, to define, analyze and evaluate the security strategy in its right context. Through qualitative text analysis, this case study analyzes four analysis units consisting of official security strategy and Defense bills by the Swedish government. Spanning from 2006 to the last unit, the National security strategy from 2017. To enrich the empirical analysis, earlier research on the subject at hand, as well as, reports from the Swedish Defense Commission and the Swedish armed forces have been added to the study.   The study concludes that the two strategic shocks have in fact had a major impact on Swedish security strategies over the past decade. Causing a shift from focusing on international operations, a solidarity doctrine and a strictly professional armed force mainly used abroad, to focusing on Sweden’s immediate vicinity, with a Baltic Sea alliance and a re-establishment of a total defense concept. Russia’s intervention in Georgia had a modest impact compared to the annexation of Crimea which created a paradigm in Swedish security strategy. It seems like the first shock was partly absorbed due to a misbelief of European safety as well as Sweden’s two-hundred-year long history of peace, mainly due to a neutral- and alliance free policy. As a result, the first shock functioned as a catalyst, amplifying the impact of the second strategic shock, causing a total turnaround of the Swedish security strategy. Its effects initiated the re-establishment of a total defense concept, new military means, strengthening of the national defense and establishing an increased permanent military presence on Gotland. It also included deepening the bi-lateral co-operation with Finland, USA, the other Nordic-Baltic countries as well as with NATO. The Swedish security strategy is now being focused to two main courses of action. The first, being able to handle a military attack on Swedish soil, the other an alliance strategy with mainly Finland and the USA in the Baltic area.