This thesis explores the prerequisites for peace in Ukraine from a typology of the conflict’s constituent elements. The material examined consist of accounts from open sources and official statements from the warring parties. The thesis concludes that the high intensity combat between two state parties and the ostensible lack of veto-players warrants a conflict with a shorter duration and relatively good prerequisites for solution. Underpinning territorial aspects and general scale of conflict together with lingering features of Russian strategic culture points to a longer and more intractable conflict. The western support for Ukraine contributes both to scale and intensity, but also induces a risk for horizontal escalation.

Operation Gold (1953-56) was a collaborative covert operation between the American CIA and British SIS. The two major objectives: firstly, rebalance the state of affairs in covert activity, which the KGB had been dominating heading into the 1950s. Secondly, gain more detailed, valuable information on the state of Soviet forces throughout Europe and gain prior warning of possible information. The technological nature of the operation marks it as the beginning of a move away from traditional espionage. Understanding the narrative of Operation Gold establishes a firm foundation on which to address the development of covert activity into the modern day. Key elements of the story of the Berlin Tunnel serve to tie this lesser known operation to modern concerns of privacy, personal data, and covert involvement in international affairs. While unravelling the truest narrative of the planning and implementation of the operation, this thesis integrates substantial events, groups and people which shape the role of the Berlin Tunnel in understanding covert conflict. Further consideration is also given to how this operations legacy unfolded and the role of the media in understanding events in this separate sphere. Lessons about the covert sphere not only address a sub-narrative of 1950s Cold War but reach conclusions pertinent to the 21st century.

On September 24, 2011, it was announced that Putin would run for president once again in 2012. The reaction in the West was that ―the more things change, the more they stay the same.‖ The Western conception of the post-Cold War Russia is often one of remarkable consistency since the turn of the century. This Western narrative focuses on an autocratic Putin reigning over his resurgent and confrontational Russia. Does this narrative tell the story of Russia today, or does it instead obscure it? To answer this I have elected to analyze Russian identity and how it relates to Russia‘s foreign policy with Belarus, traditionally a close ally of Russia. Analyzing news articles from state-owned Russia Today, I look at changes in reporting and Russian identity over time. I argue that a shift in Russian identity towards a more liberal outlook between 2006 and 2010 motivated a degradation of relations with Belarus. I argue that once the simplified narrative of a resurgent Russia is peeled back, a closer look reveals competing identities and competing interest groups in Russia‘s domestic arena. Finally I conclude that not only does identity play a pivotal role in Russia‘s relations, but also that researching identity is important in that it gives us a window into a fairly closed regime that lies at the center of the global stage. Discovering how Russian identity reacts to and influences foreign policy can offer insight into the domestic framework of contemporary Russia, as well as offer us an understanding of how central ideas are to crafting the world around us

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion into Ukraine under orders of Vladimir Putin. The invasion subsequently inspired a debate on the rationality behind this decision. The existing academic debate into the decision behind the invasion has identified both external and internal factors which can explain why this specific action may have been taken but has omitted a nuanced answer on clarifying the extent of Putin’s military actions. Prospect theory dictates that people under conditions of risk are more likely to be risk acceptant if they have experienced the context leading up to the decision to be one in which they have experienced losses. This thesis aims to explore how prospect theory can contribute to an understanding of Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine by employing a congruence analysis case-study approach. It concludes that the principles of prospect theory provide a substantiated explanation as to why Putin chose a full-scale invasion into Ukraine, demonstrating that Putin found himself in a domain of losses and opted for the option with the highest outcome uncertainty. Moreover, prospect theory also adds nuance to the existing academic debate by defining rationality as a scale with intervening factors, demonstrating that Putin’s decision-making rationality may have been impacted by his framing of losses.

The Russian-Ukrainian relationship is inherently complex. Since the end of the Cold War, there have been several defining moments in this relationship, which have contributed to how Russia perceives any potential challenges to its security. Securitising discourse from Russian political leadership, namely the President, offers an insight into what aspects of this relationship are escalated so extensively that extreme courses of action may be deemed necessary (i.e., a full-scale invasion of Ukraine). Drawing on Buzan et al. (1998), this project identifies the key sectors that Russia politicises, and those that it securitises vis-à-vis Ukraine. In addition, this study highlights the key sub-themes within politicisation and securitisation that were found within these sectors. This is all within a timeframe where relations have moved from comparatively stable to a time of war (February 2019 – February 2023). There is some degree of overlap between the themes politicised and securitised, especially across the military, political, societal, and economic sectors of security. There were no cases of securitisation within the environmental sector. Overall, this study found a significant shift in Russia’s securitisation framing of Ukraine from mid-2021 onwards.

This dissertation is aimed at investigating which elements from the Russian mythology about Crimea appear in Putin’s public political communications in the period 2014-2022, how they are used and for which reasons they are used. Crimea has been a crucial region in history-making throughout the past decade and has played an important role in Russian politics, Russian-Ukrainian relations and Russian-Western relations. Through a discourse analysis, this dissertation hopes to uncover some of the underlying mythological factors for the importance of Crimea to Russia today, why and how particular narratives make an appearance in Putin’s political communications and which political ramifications those might have. The research question is then “How has Vladimir Putin used mythology about Crimea in his political communications in the period 2014-2022?”. This research question is supported by two sub-questions: “Which narratives about Crimea appear in Vladimir Putin’s speeches in 2014-2022?” and “Which historical narratives about Crimea have been prevalent in Russian discourses since its initial annexation in 1783?”. I find that ultimately the elements of Crimean mythology used in Putin’s political communications serve to legitimize the annexation by demonstrating how Crimea is historically connected to Russian history, even if their immediate ‘function’ within the text is not evidently a legitimizing one. I also conclude that there are various ways in which these used elements of mythology might have political ramifications, namely through agenda-setting in the media, through framing political reality from a particular perspective, and lastly through changing the assessment indicators of political performance in Russia.

Theories in International Relations, often refered to as traditional, has an increasing difficulty in understanding conflict developments that – from their perspective – are considered irrational. The following study problematizes this issue by applying an ontological security perspective on the russian legitimatization of the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which arguable constitutes such an empirical example. This is done concretely by providing two guiding research questions. These are: What main narratives, that legitimazes Russias warfare in Ukraine, could be identified in the 2022 mobilization- and annexation speeches by Putin? As well as: How can this narrative legitimization be understood based on ontological security theory? The process of answering these questions is designed through Brymans thematic content analysis, which is being applied on the speeches concerned. Three russian narratives could, as a conclusion, be identified and considered as main themes. These are the narrative of Russia as a rightous actor, the narrative about a Russia influenced Ukraine and the narrative about a hostile West, respectively. Further, conceptual definitions of ontological security are turned into more explicit sub questions in order to stimulate a wider discussion in the analytical chapter. The conclusion thereafter shows that the mentioned narrative legitimization can be understood as an expression of russian identity security seeking, and thus a view of security as ”being” rather than ”survival”.

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本文旨在透過克里姆林宮政治研究途徑，來探討俄羅斯總統普欽對媒體政策之走向。本文認為普欽的媒體改革，為其鞏固政權的一環。 本文認為，1990年代俄羅斯媒體帝國崛起的主要驅動因素，乃是葉里欽企圖藉助於金融寡頭及其所掌控的媒體，以掃除蘇聯遺留下來的保守勢力，從而鞏固其政權；而普欽任內致力解構媒體帝國的主要驅動因素，則是普欽企圖以打擊經濟犯罪為名，打擊金融寡頭，藉以收攬人心，並從而解構葉里欽遺留下來的 「家族」集團勢力，建立以國家安全團隊為主幹的執政團隊，鞏固其政權基礎。 因此，本文認為： 一˙府會之爭導致「震盪療法」改革迅速失敗，繼之而起的執政團隊推動以大型企業為主軸的民營化改革導致金融工業集團應運而生。而官僚派系掠奪國家資產以擴張政治版圖，導致金融寡頭坐大進而建立媒體帝國。葉里欽為了鞏固政權競選連任與金融寡頭建立聯盟進而收編媒體帝國。 二˙普欽於2000年當選總統後，藉由剷除金融寡頭來收回國家資產以收攬人心；藉由剷除金融寡頭以鏟除葉里欽人馬所憑藉的權力堡壘；藉由剷除金融寡頭以接收媒體帝國從而鞏固政權。 / The main purpose of this study is to explore, through the Kremlin politics approach, the orientation of Russia’s policy on media under Vladimir Putin. In this study, the author argues that Putin’s media reforms constitute an indispensable link for the consolidation of his power. It is hypothesized in this study that the driving forces behind the rise and fall of Russia’s media empire are the efforts by Boris Yel’tsin and Vladimir Putin to consolidate their power respectively. Allying with the financial-industrial oligarchs, who had controlled Russian mess media, Yel’tsin strove for wiping out the conservative forces left by the Soviet regime in order to consolidate his power. On the contrary, Putin has sought to wipe out the oligarchs and restructure the media empire, in order to rally the popular support, to wipe out the “Family” forces left by Yel’tsin’s regime and replace them with a new ruling command of national security elite, and, consequently, to consolidate his own power. The above-mentioned hypothesized proposition can be further developed into the following logically consequential sub-propositions: First of all, in the wake of the “shock therapy” ruined by the conflict between the parliament and the Kremlin, the following privatization reforms orienting on the creation of big enterprises gave rise to the creation of financial-industrial groups. Consequently, the corruption committed by bureaucrats who preyed upon state-owned enterprises led to the expansion of oligarchs’ strength so as to establish influential enormous media empire. Thereafter, aiming at consolidating his power and winning the coming presidential election, Yel’tsin formed an alliance with the financial oligarchs and thus put the newly-established media empire on his orbit. Secondly, after Putin was elected president in 2000, he strove for wiping out the financial oligarchs in order to accomplish the following three tasks: to renationalize the state properties in order to rally popular support; to wipe out Yeltsin’s power base; and, to take over and restructure media empire in order to consolidate his regime. Key words: Kremlin politics approach, Oligarchy, Putin, Russia’s media

L’ascension de Vladimir Poutine à la présidence de la Russie fut un point tournant dans l’histoire de la Russie et de ses relations avec l’occident. Lorsqu’il est comparé aux politiques plus pro-occidentales de son prédécesseur, Boris Eltsine, le nouveau nationalisme russe de Poutine changea la relation de la Russie avec l’Occident. Ce texte utilise des articles publiés dans quatre journaux influents de l’Occident—le Washington Post, le New York Times, le Guardian et l’Independent—pour montrer comment l’Occident percevait la Russie entre 1999 et 2008. Poutine fut longuement critiqué pour avoir transformé la « démocratie », instauré par l’Occident dans les années postsoviétiques, en autocratie qui reflétait plus le contexte politico-social traditionnel russe. La Russie refusa de se soumettre aux intérêts de l’Occident. Les médias populaires occidentaux, reflétant les intérêts de leurs gouvernements respectifs, ont rondement critiqué la nouvelle direction de la Russie. L’obligation perçue par les médias occidentaux de promouvoir la « démocratie » autour du globe les a menés à condamner Poutine et la Russie, ce qui créa un sentiment de « russophobie ». / The ascension of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency was a turning point in the history of Russia. Using articles from four influential western newspapers—the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and the Independent—this text will show the West perceived Russia during Putin’s between 1999 and 2008. Putin was heavily criticized as he was moving the country away from the “democracy” installed by the West after the Cold War, to a path more in line with traditional Russian principles. Russia refused to be subservient to Western interests. The western mainstream media reflected their government’s interests and critiqued Russia’s new path. The western media’s perceived obligation to promote “freedom” and “democracy” around the world has led it to condemn Russia and Putin and to create a sense of “russophobia” in the West.