For two years now the war in Southeast Ukraine has claimed approximately 10,000 lives and countless casualties. Pegged as a civil war, the conflict is waging on between pro-Western nationalists and pro-Russian separatists. The war ignited after the public ousting of President Yanukovch in Maidan Square in the midst of thousands of protesters, and the subsequent annexation of Crimea. Although the Russian Federation maintains it does not have a military presence in Ukraine, U.S. intelligence and Ukrainian military officials have evidence otherwise. As a result, the West has imposed significant sanctions on “Putin's Russia”. This study explores how Putin justifies the Russian incursion into Ukraine through his own rhetoric, and further, whether this rhetoric changes when speaking to a domestic versus international audience. In the context of framing, this study analyzes 57 speeches, interviews, and excerpts of Vladimir Putin focused on the Crisis in Ukraine, from the years of 2013 to 2016. Throughout the literature, Kin-state rallying, Russian encirclement by enemies/isolation, Russian ethnocentrism, blurred legal rhetoric, and manipulation of historical myth, are the predominant frames that emerge. By way of propaganda, the findings indicate that Putin's most frequently used justifications frame the conflict through Russia's necessity to protect its brother nation from an unstable government, and the projection of blame onto the West. In effect, this study not only emphasizes the significance and implications of framing by elites in conflict, it also sheds light on the current debate over Putin's motivations in Ukraine. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy / MA; / Thesis;

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@St. Gallen, Univ., Diss., 2009.

Studien har i syfte att undersöka vilka genrer, diskursiva strategier och lingvistiska verktyg som Rysslands president Vladimir Putin använder sig utav och hur det kan kopplas samman med tidigare forskning om propaganda. Studien utgår från Putins tal på Moskvas Stadium den 18 mars 2022 då han adresserar åttaårsjubileet av Rysslands annektering av Krim. Metoden som använts för studien är diskursiv-historisk analys, som bygger på kritisk diskursanalys. För att koppla samman Putins tal med en vidare historisk kontext har även Joseph Stalins tal från den 7 november 1941 analyserats på samma sätt.  För att kort sammanfatta resultatet så visade det sig att det finns vissa likheter mellan Putin och Stalins tal i hänseende av genre samt diskursiva strategier, den största skillnaden handlar om att Putin använder ett försiktigare vokabulär än Stalin samt att Putin är mer argumenterande. / The study aims to examine the genres, discursive strategies and linguistic tools that Russian President Vladimir Putin uses and how it can be linked to previous research on propaganda. The study is based on Putin's speech at Moscow's Stadium on March 18, 2022, when he addresses the eighth anniversary of Russia's annexation of Crimea. The method used for the study is discursive-historical analysis, which is based on critical discourse analysis. To connect Putin's speech with a historical context, Joseph Stalin's speech of November 7, 1941 has also been analyzed in the same way. To summarize the results, it turned out that there are some similarities between Putin and Stalin's speeches in terms of genre and discursive strategies, the biggest difference is that Putin uses a more cautious vocabulary than Stalin and that Putin is more argumentative.

The aim of this thesis was to examine how the two Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter portrayed the actions of Russia, Vladimir Putin, Nato and their allies and Ukraine in the conflict surrounding the sovereignty of Crimea that started in 2014.Our study was based on 18 news articles from the start of the conflict up to august of 2015.The results showed that Russia is portrayed as the villian of the conflict. Aftonbladet portrayed the nation as a threat to Sweden and the rest of the western countries. Both papers tended to treat Russian sources with distrust, often choosing to interview Swedish experts on Russia rather than citing Russian sources. Vladimir Putin was portrayed as an evil dictator who set his own interests first and foremost. Both papers drew parallels between Putins way of ruling with the style of leadership in Soviet Russia.In both Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter, Nato and their allies actions are portrayed as self defence towards Russia. Their actions are justified and always put in a perspective towards the actions of the Russians.The nation of Ukraine are initially portrayed as victims of Russian aggression. A few months into the conflict the newspapers started to become more critical of the Ukrainian actions, but always put it into perspective towards russian actions.Our study shows that swedish media holds a critical view towards Russia and their actions.

Abstract This thesis will examine Vladimir Putin's controversial political decisions regarding the Second Chechen War justifying the conflict both inside and outside of Russia. It opens with Putin identifying with the United States after the terrorist activities of September 11, 2001 and how he used the American War on Terror to explain his own decisions regarding the Caucasus. For further understanding the paper looks at the history of Russian-Chechen relations to show how the centuries of hostility and mistrust culminated in two Chechen Wars within a ten year time period (1994-2004). It will also study the Russian view, held by Putin, which Chechnya was not declaring independence but was attempting to secede from the Russian Federation. It concludes with a look at Putin's solution to the conflict, the Chechnization of the Second Chechen War, where the Russian military withdrew from the region to be replaced by Putin's handpicked regime, the Kadyrovs.

National identity provides the interpretive framework through which foreign policy makers understand their role in the world and the actions of other states, and can also be utilized as a tool to mobilize public support behind foreign policy maneuvers. Foreign policy in turn is both shaped by constructions of national identity, and often used to forge and substantiate the narratives of national identity which best serve the regime’s domestic interests. This thesis will seek to establish the mutually constitutive relationship between national identity and foreign policy through an analysis of the interaction of these elements in the Russian Federation under President Vladimir Putin. Russian national identity will be considered in its formation with respect to the Historical, Internal, and External ‘Others’ in post-Soviet discourse originally identified by the constructivist analysis of Ted Hopf, with particular emphasis on the evolution of identity narratives disseminated from the Kremlin.

Cold War Soviet foreign policy was driven by a strategic competition. A competition-detente cycle based on the superpower rivalry between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, including the Warsaw Pact dependencies, and the United States of America and its respective alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) existed for over forty-five years. Following the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact and the implosion of the USSR, remnant Soviet and subsequent Russian foreign policy, changed dramatically. Though some fragmentary Soviet style vertical controls of the foreign policy of the transitional Gorbachev years and the first years of Yeltsin's first administration were recognizable, their respective foreign relations operated on the defensive realities of a splintered empire in every conceivable manner. This dissertation will track and analyze each president's foreign policy goals within the dependent variables of social, economic and political influences of post Cold War realities. In an absolute sense, each president formulated Russian foreign policy based on domestic considerations. This fact constitutes the independent variable in this analysis. From the bellicosity of the Cold War through the opposition of Russia to America's unilateralist approach to the second Iraqi war, Russia attempted to return as a major player in international relations as a whole and as an interlocutor with the United States in a strategic sense. This engagement has produced the gambit of political polemics, from the strident Soviet "launch on warning" correlation of forces fighting doctrine to the interactive and more personal political good will venue between Bush and Putin. It is this "push-pull" political history that prompts the primary research question: Is the present Russian strategic relationship with the post 9.11 United States the beginning of a new and unique post Cold War international relationship or is it simply a continuation of the familiar confrontation-detente cycle historically endemic to Russian-American relations? Has the American occupation of Iraq, a perennial Russian client state, derailed the post 9.11 accommodation between the two countries?

In China¡¦s view, it is necessary to get crude oil and oil pipeline. Under Russia and China strategic partnership, China tries to obtain ¡§long term promises¡¨ and ¡§Pipeline Corporation¡¨ from Russia in oil diplomacy. There are several findings in this article: 1. International oil prices are important to China¡¦s oil diplomacy with Russia. 2.China¡¦s oil diplomacy with Russia includes geop olitcs and diversification. 3. Due to economic development, China needs long term oil supply contract. Putin did not prove this contract. 4. Because of navel and air forces are not strong enough, China develops oil pipeline to protect oil security.

Abstrakt   I den här uppsatsen i statsvetenskap studeras Rysslands president Vladimir Putins agerande under Krim-krisen. Den har som syfte att söka en rationell förklaring för dennes agerande med åtanke av att ytterst få västerländska bedömare förmådde förutse en rysk intervention på Krim. Samt att på ett bredare plan analysera svårigheterna med att förutse militära interventioner.  För att ge en sådan förklaring används en rally-round-the-flag modell som kompletterande perspektiv. Materialet till studien har funnits i huvudsak i massmediala källor där nyhetsartiklar som analyserar händelseförloppet och motiven bakom det har studerats. Detta har delvis gjorts genom en argumentationsanalys men även en mer teoretisk studie av rally-round-the-flag perspektivet har gjorts.   Utredningen visar bland annat att västerländska medier gör flera felbedömningar då de antar att Putin inte kommer att intervenera i Krim. Detta då de missbedömer den strategiska utgångspunkten samt att de inte ser Putin som en agent med egenintressen. Resultatet visar även att agerandet kan ses som rationellt förutsatt att hans egenintresse särskiljs från den ryska statens intressen. Detta då det är rimligt att tro att agerandet var av sådan art att det kunde stärka hans ställning på hemmaplan och därmed minimera risken att hans egen regim ifrågasattes. Slutligen visar studien på hur rally-round-the-flag effekten kan förklara varför vissa regimer medvetet uppsöker konflikter även om dessa inte nödvändigtvis är i nationens intresse.