Abstract This thesis investigates Romania’s response to the Russia-Ukraine war, focusing on the discourse surrounding sovereignty, the limitations of military power, and the potential for diplomatic alternatives. The study critically analyzes Romanian media coverage and political statements to explore how sovereignty is framed in the context of the conflict and examines the efficacy of military power versus non-military diplomatic strategies. Through a qualitative content analysis of selected Romanian news articles and official communications, the research identifies key themes and narratives that shape Romania’s stance on the conflict. The findings reveal a complex relationship between national security concerns, historical ties, and international diplomatic pressures. Moreover, the study highlights the constraints and costs associated with military power projection and underscores the importance of diplomatic avenues in mitigating conflict. By providing a comprehensive understanding of Romania’s position and proposing diplomatic strategies as viable alternatives to militarism, this thesis contributes to broader discussions on international relations and conflict resolution. The study also addresses methodological limitations, including potential biases in source selection and translation challenges.

Background: In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and put the world into a state of geopolitical crisis, leading to severe negative spillover effects on the global economy. Corporations were compelled to respond to the geopolitical crisis, while some were indirectly exposed to the war and others directly affected, all corporations had to decide on their strategic actions. Thus, questions arise how and why corporations acted as they did. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how corporations react to a geopolitical crisis, and further explain how they make their strategic decisions. The study adopts a contingency perspective to identify the fundamental basis upon which strategic decisions were made. Additionally, the study tests whether stakeholders’ influences can explain the corporations’ decisions. Method: This study employs a quantitative methodology with a deductive approach in an exploratory and positivistic paradigm. This is done to examine the relationship between corporations’ exposure to Russia, stakeholders’ influences, and strategic decisions regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. Data were gathered from annual reports and various databases, and analyzed using Spearman correlation matrix and linear regression models. Conclusion: The findings show that corporations act differently depending on their contingencies in reaction to a geopolitical crisis. Furthermore, stakeholders influence the strategic decisions in corporations indirectly affected by the geopolitical crisis, however, their influence is diminished in corporations directly impacted. While some stakeholder influences were found on the strategic decisions made by the most severely impacted corporations, other factors seem to ultimately determine the strategic decisions in the directly impacted corporations.

In 2004 Hammes claimed that the world entered a new generation of war, fourth generation warfare. This type of warfare is different from earlier generations since the wars will not be conventional but irregular wars, an advance kind of insurgency. In 2022 the war between Russia and Ukraine suddenly escalates into an undeniable conventional war which puts the relevance of Hammes theory and claim into question. It raises the issue of whether this war disproves the claim and weakens his theory. Whether this war is the return of earlier generations where conventional wars existed or whether there is a possibility that even this war is inherently fourth generational. That the fourth generation generally describes characteristics of warfare today regardless of whether they be conventional or not. The study found that there is an overlap between the criteria Hammes use to define fourth generational conflicts and the war in Ukraine and Russia. This suggests that Hammes theory could still be relevant in this specific case. However, it is also discussed whether the claim can be made that fourth generational warfare truly has replaced its predecessor third generational warfare when there is no real point of comparison between the two generations. Lastly follows a shorter discussion of what this paper contributes with to the military profession and suggestions for further research within this field.

The primary focus of this thesis is to investigate the amount and nature of influence that the United States has on the potential future admittance of Turkey, Ukraine and Georgia into the European Union. All three countries have expressed interest in EU membership and are supported by the United States in their effort to join the union. This thesis attempts to shed some light on the means by which the US has attempted to facilitate accession and the reasons for its supportive stance, as well as to predict the effectiveness of its pro-membership advocacy. Four major factors common to all three case studies are used to analyze the issue and provide evidence for the author's hypothesis that US influence on European affairs is declining. In addition to US interests and relating efforts, these factors are: candidate country background situations, the EU's position on potential membership, and Russian influence on EU decision making. In concluding analysis, this thesis explains how a change in US influence over European affairs may affect the overall power relationship between the US, EU and Russia, as the question of EU membership for the cases studied is about much more than simply EU expansion.

The Russian Federation has recently implemented a foreign policy strategy aimed at subverting the West’s ability to deter Russia from destabilizing its neighbors. This strategy combines elements of conventional military strategy with “weaponized information” in order to achieve success in the political and military arenas of conflict. “Weaponized Information” goes beyond the “network-centric” warfare envisioned by cyber security experts, focused instead upon the development of “fake news,” disinformation, and encouraging conflicting media narratives. This thesis explores this strategy through Thomas Schelling’s framework of deterrence elucidated in Arms and Influence and uses recent events in Ukraine, Syria, the United States, and Europe to describe the development and implementation of “weaponized information” in 21st Century international conflicts. / Master of Arts / Beginning with the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, this thesis will examine the development of Russia’s strategy of “weaponized information.” “Weaponized information” includes: “fake news,” election tampering, disinformation, and hacking. Weaponized information compliments conventional military operations in order to keep Russia’s adversaries from realizing they are under attack and keeps Russia’s adversaries from intervening against Russia. This thesis examines the historical reasons Russia has developed this strategy, how it intersects with theory on how to stop adversaries from intervening against a country’s actions, and provides real-world examples of how and where weaponized information is used. Understanding these events will better prepare the United States and the West to defend themselves against aggressive states that seek to harm them. This thesis also attempts to provide to combine understanding of this military strategy with academic work on how to analyze it to better prepare future scholars who research in this field.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which started on February 24, 2022, has marked a turning point in Russian-Western relations. While liberal democratic societies’ unanimous condemnation of that invasion was followed by unprecedented sanctions and a rupture of diplomatic and economic relations with Russia, some Western social and political actors supported, to some extent, the Russian rhetoric regarding the invasion of Ukraine. Consequentially, this paper not only reveals that Russian state discourses aimed to justify the invasion, it also identifies the selective dissemination of Russian state discourses by the AfD in Germany. Moreover, it compares the antagonistic discursive dynamics in the authoritarian pseudo-civil sphere and the similar discourses of the radical right in the democratic civil sphere, and examine their reception in Russia and Germany. Drawing on Multilayered Narrative Analysis, which relies on a combination of cultural sociological Civil Sphere Theory (CST) and mnemonic figurations developed in the historical sociology of Bernhard Giesen, this paper first describes the Russian state discourses intended to sacralize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It then examines to what extent the populist radical right disseminated these in Germany, before analyzing and comparing the symbolic influence of such discourses in the Russian pseudo-civil and German civil spheres.

L’effondrement du communisme en 1991 en Russie a conduit à la révision des manuels scolaires d’histoire en Russie et dans les anciennes républiques de l’URSS. Ce travail propose d’évaluer l’histoire récente post-communiste enseignée dans les classes supérieures du secondaire dans trois pays post-communistes. Nous allons s’attarder sur la présentation des divers périodes historiques de l’histoire Soviétique dans les manuels scolaires d’histoire en Russie, Ukraine et Estonie. Ce travail tente également d’examiner les diverses approches dans l’enseignement d’histoire dans ces trois pays, ainsi que de répondre à la question comment les nouveaux manuels redéfinissent la perception de la culture et d’histoire des élèves dans chaque pays. / Our work will examine the crucial rupture between Soviet and Russian history from 1985 (1991 in some cases) through 2010, during which rival political leaders of Ukraine, Estonia and Russia had an opportunity to develop and attempt to impose their visions of their respective national identities and their history. The main goal of this study is to provide a new understanding of the connection between history, ideology, and development of national consciousness. The focus of the previous research in this domain concentrated on each studied country in particular. Mainstream historiography left unnoticed particularities in the development of new political discourse in the peripheral states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The proposed study project will examine the consequences of the dissolution of the USSR on the socio-political situation in Eastern Europe. It should shed light on the effects the collapse of the Soviet Union had on the intensification of ethnic, nationalist and religious discourse in several former socialist republics. We conducted a comparative study of recent history textbooks in several countries of Eastern Europe (in Russia, Ukraine and Estonia) and analyzed the new content of post-Soviet history textbooks used in Eastern European Secondary schools. Each of these countries followed a distinct path; therefore we aimed to reveal their particular search for a new national identity and citizenship during the transitional period. / В рамках данной работы мы изучили преподавание истории в школах трех постсоветских государств: России, Украины и Эстонии. Было также уделено внимание восприятию истории ХХ века населением этих стран. Были собраны, частично переведены с национальных языков и проанализированы около 50 школьных учебников истории для старших классов из России, Украины и Эстонии. Изученные учебники являются наиболее массовыми и иногда даже единственными в своем роде в школах этих государств. Анализ школьных учебников истории, приведенный в этой работе, показывает, что в отличие от России, Украина и Эстония пошли по пути преподавания подрастающему поколению националистической трактовки истории, основанной на мифах о древности своего народа, о высокой культурной миссии предков и о «заклятом враге». Россия, в свою очередь, сделала ставку на патриотическое воспитание нового поколения, умалчивая неприятные эпизоды из прошлого и прелагая новый, «позитивный» подход к изучению истории. Эта работа ставит цель не только проанализировать сложившуюся ситуацию в школьном образовании в Восточной Европе после распада Советского Союза, но и оценить роль преподавания истории в создании особенной, уникальной и, зачастую, националистической идеологии.

L’objectif de cette étude était d'étudier les différences de mortalité régionales en Ukraine, les structures par causes de décès et les tendances à différentes échelles spatiales. Tout d'abord, des contrastes géographiques nets ont été mis en évidence : pour les hommes, entre l'ouest et l'est de l'Ukraine, et pour les femmes - entre l'ouest et le sud-est. L’étude des disparités régionales en fonction de l’âge révèle que les régions les plus avancées sont caractérisées par une diminution de la mortalité chez les personnes les plus âgées. Dans les grandes villes, pour la plupart des causes de décès (à l'exception du cancer et des maladies infectieuses) vivre dans une grande métropole est un avantage pour survivre. Le cas de la ville de Slavoutytch qui avait particulièrement souffert de l'accident de Tchernobyl a fait l’objet d’une analyse spécifique. Deuxièmement, une attention particulière a été portée aux schémas régionaux de mortalité par causes médicales de décès et a montré que les régions ukrainiennes se trouvent à différents stades de la lutte contre les maladies dégénératives. Enfin, les particularités de la dynamique de deux dernières décennies ont été étudiées. Pendant cette période l'espérance de vie a connu une forte baisse, suivie d’une stagnation, puis d’un début de reprise. Ces évolutions se sont accompagnées d’une transformation des schémas régionaux de mortalité par cause. Ces changements, qu’ils soient majeurs ou plus modestes n’ont pas été réellement identifiés par les pouvoirs publics et aucune avancée sanitaire décisive ne s’est produite dans aucune des régions de l'Ukraine. Il n'y a eu ni stratégies, ni mesures ou réformes efficaces mises en œuvre pour permettre une amélioration substantielle de la santé de la population. / The aim of this study was to investigate regional mortality differences in Ukraine, cause-of-death patterns and trends at different spatial scales. First of all, general contrasts were established: for males between the west and east of Ukraine, while for females between the west and south-east. Study of regional disparities in respect of different age groups revealed that regions that succeeded the most are those characterized by decreased mortality at older ages. As for big cities, for the most of cases of death (except cancer and infectious diseases) living in a big metropolis is an advantage to surviving. The special case of the city of Slavutych that suffered the most from Chernobyl accident was studied. Second, special attention was given to regional patterns of mortality for different medical cause of death, and which showed that Ukrainian regions are at different stages in the fight against man-made and degenerative diseases. Lastly, peculiarities of dynamics over last two decades were investigated. During this period life expectancy has experienced a sharp decrease, followed by stagnation, and recovery. This evolution was accompanied by transformation of regional cause-specific mortality patterns. These changes, larger and smaller, were not actually accounted for by public authorities and no important breakthroughs happened in any Ukraine region. There were no efficient strategies, measures or reforms implemented that would allow substantial improvements in the health of the population.

Cette thèse de doctorat étudie les formes et les modes d’expression, de représentation et de structuration des identités politiques dans la presse écrite lors de la « révolution orange » (Ukraine, 2004). En nous situant dans une perspective interdisciplinaire et en articulant l’analyse du discours et l’analyse sémiotique, nous étudions les représentations, à la fois esthétiques et discursives, que les identités permettent et la manière dont la signification leur est attribuée, acceptée ou refusée dans les discours et les images des médias. Le corpus étant constitué de quatre journaux ukrainiens (Den, Zerkalo nedeli, Segodnya et Fakty i kommentarii) et de quatre journaux français (Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro et L’Humanité). La thèse parvient à démontrer que les identités politiques se constituent dans les médias à travers trois modes d’énonciation : intertextualité politique, intericonicité politique et interévénementialité politique. La logique des médias est alors moins d’informer des événements qui ont lieu mais d’assurer par la médiation de l’information et de l’opinion la reconnaissance de notre appartenance et de notre sociabilité. / This PhD thesis explores the forms and the modes of expression, representation and construction of political identities in the press during the “Orange Revolution” (Ukraine, 2004). Through the interdisciplinary approach and bringing semiotic and discourse analysis together, this dissertation analyzes both aesthetic and discursive representations of identities and the manner in which the meaning is assigned, accepted or refused to them in discourses and images. The data consist of four Ukrainian newspapers (Den, Zerkalo nedeli, Segodnya and Fakty i kommentarii) and four French newspapers (Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro and L’Humanité). My findings support arguments that political identities are mainly constructed in media through three types of enunciation: political intertextuality, political intericonicity and political intereventness. Therefore, the logic of the media is less to inform of events taking place but to ensure through the mediation of information and opinion the recognition of our identity and of our sociability.

Nikita Khrouchtchev est surtout connu en Occident comme étant celui qui a permis le relatif soulagement de la déstalinisation. Cette image est d’ailleurs aussi persistante dans les anciens pays de l’URSS. Lorsque Khrouchtchev accède au pouvoir, il aspire en effet à des modifications ambitieuses dans des domaines extrêmement variés. La dénonciation des crimes de Staline lors du XXème Congrès du PCUS ouvre la voie à l’expression d’un certain pluralisme intellectuel et artistique qualifié de « dégel » dont les effets seront irréversibles pour la société soviétique dans son ensemble. Le volontarisme du premier secrétaire conduit à une politique de réformes économiques et politiques aussi impromptues que déstabilisatrices. Cependant la déstalinisation sera pour les peuples soviétiques (tout spécialement pour les ukrainiens) une ère de déceptions autant que d’espoirs. En effet, l’Ukraine, un des plus solides bastions de la vie religieuse en Union soviétique, tiendra une place particulière dans cette campagne. Entre autres, les régions de l’ouest de l’Ukraine avaient échappées à la répression des années trente et constituaient un phénomène singulier avec leur vie religieuse vivace et leur refus de rejoindre l’orthodoxie. Ainsi la campagne antireligieuse de Khrouchtchev est une facette méconnue de la politique du successeur de Staline. Le comportement du nouveau premier secrétaire va ainsi être encore plus dur que celui de Staline l’ancien séminariste à l’égard de la religion. Ce dernier avait fait des concessions aux Eglises après 1943, alors que dès 1958, quelques années après l’accession au pouvoir de Khrouchtchev, la propagande antireligieuse redevient virulente. / Nikita Khrushchev is mainly known in the western countries as the one who has allowed a relative relief of the dictatorship thanks to the destalinization process. This opinion is also persistent in the former countries of the USSR. Indeed when Khrushchev seizes power, he wishes to proceed with many ambitious reforms in various areas. Nevertheless, he remains a convinced communist who tries this way to give a new start to the soviet ideological adventure. The denunciation of the crimes of Stalin during the XXth Congress of the Soviet Union Communist Party (SUCP) opens path to some intellectual and artistic pluralism often called « unfreezing ». Furthermore, the wills of the first secretary will lead to a policy of unexpected and unbalancing politic and economic reforms. But in fact the destalinization times will also be times of disappointments, especially for the Ukrainians. Indeed Ukraine will have a special place in the antireligious campaign, as one of the healthiest strongholds of the religious life of the Soviet Union. Since the western regions had not suffered the repression of the thirties, they were a singular phenomenon in the Soviet Union with their vivid religious life and their refusal to become uniformly orthodox. Thus the antireligious campaign of Khrushchev is one of the poorly known sides of the policy of Stalin’s successor. The behaviour of the new first secretary as regards the religions will be indeed even harsher than the one of Stalin (the former were-be priest). Stalin had made concessions to the churches after 1943; but as soon as 1958, few years after Khrushchev’s rise to power, the antireligious propaganda becomes strong and efficient again.