of Master thesis Russia's Syria policy: geopolitical interests or defense of great power identity? Marcel Hirling Abstract: Russia has been the dominating actor in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. Researchers disagree what Russia motivates to block UN resolutions, support Assad, and intervene militarily in 2015. Academics have mainly focused on neorealist explanations. Constructivist arguments have been shortcoming so far as they miss a detailed theoretical justification and empirical evidence. This thesis aims to fill this gap by arguing that the objective utility of Syria is marginal. Instead, Syria provided Russia the opportunity to present itself as a global power, able to shape world affairs on eye level with the US. Therefore, this paper conducts a congruence analysis, which evaluates each theory's explanatory power. The analytical section is split into three parts. The first shows that events before Syria did not make a Russian intervention in Syria necessary, but that recognition of Russia's global power identity has been denied. That Russia's actions in Syria are not entirely congruent with neorealist expectations is shown by the second part. Finally, by conducting a content-analysis, several Russian narratives are evaluated that support the argument that Russia seeks...

Russia as a rising power in multilateral institutions looks at the Russian attitude towards all institutions this country participated in 2001-2015. I address the questions of what is the attitude of Moscow and what determines the country's choice of attitude patterns. Drawing from the works of those specializing in rising powers and Russian foreign policy, I seek answers to my research questions and contribute to both strings of literature. The parsimonious hypothesis suggests that Russia's attitude depends on its position within the institution. In cases when Moscow holds a strong position in an institution, the country develops a supportive attitude; Russia's weak position within an institution translates into a challenger attitude. I endorse the existing studies by arguing and further supporting with data that Russia tends to be a revisionist in West-led hard-issue institutions it joined after the end of the Cold War. The data points at the supportive attitude pattern also in situations when Russia holds a strong position in institutions it co-founded as a rising power status in the last two decades. The primary data source for the dissertation is the recently released online archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Analyzed with the sentiment analysis software, the...

This diploma thesis deals with the spread of manipulative, propagandistic and fake news in the Internet online environment. The spread of disinformation also occurred during the Czech presidential election, which took place in January 2018. This disinformation was spread mainly by the so-called alternative media, which are often associated with the spread of Russian propaganda. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the disinformation and its dissemination, the means used and forms of disinformation in the specified time period from November 2017 to March 2018 on selected news portals through qualitative textual analysis. In the theoretical part of this thesis, we present a comprehensive and detailed theoretical overview of disinformation and propaganda, its goals, aspects of dissemination, the resulting effect and possible ways how to defend against them. Similarly, we mention the individual steps of pragmalinguistics, which is theoretical basis for our research. In the empirical part of the work, we analyze the media content of five selected news sites, which we structurally divide according to individual media. At the end of our thesis we found out that there was a demonstrable spread of misleading,

The diploma thesis deals with the influence of economic security on foreign in-vestments. The thesis examines the issues of economic security and research the motives of investors and the factors that influence investors, when they deciding about entering the market of another country, and the theoretical influence of economic security on foreign investments. Subsequently, this relation is examined in three economies: Czech Republic, Russia and China. For this purpose are done qualitative and regression analysis and are formulated recommendations for im-proving economic security and inflow of foreign investment.

The objective of thesis is to identify and subsequently analyze the issue of dynamics of agricultural foreign trade between the European Union and Russia. All of the used data come from the last two decades monitoring, showing the tendencies of development in the agrarian sector between the EU and Russia from the year of 1995 to 2015. The theoretical part of the thesis, presented in the form of a literature overview, describes the basic principles necessary for further analytical data processing, include theoretical models of international trade and its development, and characterizes the effect of globalization and regionalization processes and their impacts on the functioning of the agrarian trade. The first phase of the actual work is dedicated to the importance of the agri-food sector for both parties, the territorial and commodity structure of mutual trade, and the definition of the development and position of the European Union and Russia as trading partners. Furthermore, the flagship product groups are identified and subsequently examined with respect to the selected characteristics. Retrospective evaluation shows the role of the ongoing liberalization processes on the market and the importance of the European Union as a trading partner for the investigated state. The possibilities of the Czech foreign trade in the context of cooperation with Russia are analyzed in the concluding part.

The diploma thesis deals with pre-match preparation at a professional level for ice hockey players under 16 years of age with the Russian and Czech national teams. The aim of the work is to map and compare the pre-match phase for the Czech and Russian national teams up to 16 years old. I divided the work into several parts. The theoretical part is devoted to the characteristics of ice hockey, sports performance in ice hockey, fitness training, warm-up, hockey training, hockey match, stretching and eating. The practical part specifically focuses on the Russian and Czech national teams, contains records of morning training, meals, pre-match preparation, pre-match training, roster, number of goals in the games, games results and post-match stretching. I used observation, interview and statistical methods to find out the results for the practical part.

This thesis is applying the neglected concept of assurance on assuring efforts of NATO towards Estonia. This small Baltic republic lives in a fear of conflict with its Russian neighbour which would be impossible to win without help from abroad. The author asks, whether the effort to assure Estonians, that NATO would come to help in case of conflict is successful and what can be improved. To reveal, whether Estonia is assured, the author conducted research interviews in Tallinn with Estonians from the state administration, military, academics, experts from think-tanks and journalist. To get a full picture, the author also used public opinion polls. The thesis uses the concept of assurance as it was defined by Jeffrey W. Knopf. The concept is understudied and almost not used for empirical research. Importance of assuring allies is rising in contemporary's world and this thesis is trying to fill the research gap and show a possible direction for further research on the assurance of allies. Last but not least, the author is contributing to the debate about the defence of the Baltics.

Electronic Warfare has, in recent years, become a key field in modern armed forces. After wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and experience from conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, Western armed forces turned their attention to the field of Electronic Warfare. The most powerful armed forces of the world are being modernized under the Network-Centric Warfare and Multi-Domain Operations concepts based on real-time data-sharing and communications in the Electromagnetic spectrum. This master thesis deals with Great Powers perspectives (the US, Russia, and Israel), lessons learned from the conflicts mentioned above in Ukraine and Syria, compares it with doctrinal documents of the Czech Armed Forces, and identifies lessons for Czech Armed Forces. The main goal of this thesis is to identify lessons learned for the Czech Armed Forces and key priorities in modernization for the Czech Armed forces to be prepared for future threats and battlefield. Based on the discussed approaches and conflicts, the author identifies the following implications. There is a need to update Czech doctrinal documents. Czech Armed Forces should not focus only on the modernization of special Electronic Warfare units but to introduce the field of Electronic Warfare across the Armed forces. Czech Air Force needs to be equipped with offensive...

Changing international environment and new threats. Opportunity for a European strategic culture? The international environment is going through a period of major upheaval. Terrorism, the growing influence of emerging powers and authoritarian regimes, and the weakening of multilateralism contribute to the gradual deterioration of the world order and simultaneously represent a serious challenge to Europe. In the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the vulnerability of the European security architecture became especially apparent. This thesis aims to unfold how these changes were perceived and responded to by two major countries of the European Union: France and Germany. The main focus is on the perception of these changes, the security challenges and the relationship with Russia and its confrontational policy towards Europe and the surrounding areas. Furthermore, it deals with their perception of the changing foreign-policy priorities of the United States and the deepening of European cooperation in the field of security and defense policy. The analysis of the German and French discourse depicts their attitude and then compares their approach to the changing international landscape, thus answering the question of the compatibility of their respective strategic thinking.

The existence of Russian middle class is often perceived as a condition for Russia's democratization and the country's economic progress is often mentioned in connection with the growth of the middle class and henceforth increased popular demand for transparent functioning of public institutions. However economic growth does not necessarily lead to more extensive middle class, especially not when the income inequality rises as was the case of Russia in the particular period. This thesis proves that Russian middle class grew between the years 1998 and 2008, it identifies its specific features and explains its evolution from the perspective of occupation and income. The data from Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, which the thesis is based on, confirm that while the Russian middle class was growing in size, growth in inequality was also observed, especially between cities and countryside and between individual economic sectors.