Mediated public diplomacy plays an important role in attaining foreign policy objectives by communicating with foreign audiences in order to establish a dialogue intending to inform and influence. The Russian state-funded global network RT serves as an important tool of Russian mediated public diplomacy. Its purpose is not only to cover major global events that are often missed by the Western mainstream media, but also to apprise an international audience of an alternative pro-Russian perspective. Interestingly, although there are a few researches analysing Moscow's efforts to rebrand its international image in the last decade, there has been very little work done giving a good insight into Russian media. This dissertation seeks to participate in the discussion about public diplomacy in general by applying the framing theory as a tool of mediated diplomacy. A qualitative analysis of 97 articles discussing the effects of international sanctions imposed on Russia in the aftermath of the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis, revealed a constructed pro-Russian narrative. Several strategies are pursued to convince its audience about the rightness of the Russian stance and gain support for the Kremlin's assertions. Finally, RT aims to wipe out the demonisation of Putin and its administration and counterbalance the penetration of the West in its sphere of influence.

The subject of my thesis is the impact of the Ukrainian crisis on German Russian relations and the German economy. Experts say that the deterioration of trade relations between the European Union and Russia caused by the Ukrainian crisis will also affect the economies of individual European countries. The deterioration in trade relations were caused by sanctions imposed in response to the crisis in Ukraine. The degree of impact of the Ukrainian crisis on a given country is directly proportional to the countrys interconnection with the Russia. Before the Ukrainian crisis began, Germany was Russias most active trading partner from the European Union. Germany also plays a significant role in the Ukrainian crisis, as a negotiator between the European Union and Russia. The influence of the Ukrainian crisis on the German economy is defined by the development of Germanys economic relations with Russia an important trading partner to Germany. Two economic indicators were used to assess the relationship: German-Russian commodity trading and German foreign direct investment in the Russian market. The development of trade between Germany and Russia was also analyzed within the individual economic sectors targeted by the sanctions. The impact of the Ukrainian crisis on the German economy was further assessed by the development of Germanys trade relati-ons with Ukraine and Belarus. The results of the analysis of economic indicators, which are in line with the information provided in expert sources, confirmed the negative impact of the Ukrainian crisis on German-Russian relations and the German economy. The negative impacts of the Ukrainian crisis on the German economy manifest in the form of financial losses caused by the decline in German exports to Russia and the poor economic situation of German investors in the Russian market. Due to the sanctions, some long-term projects between Germany and Russia were canceled, German companies operating in the Russian market experienced declining revenues, and these companies were forced to lay off workers.

This thesis is trying to assess the effects of sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 by the European Union and other countries, with respect to the changes in the trade flows among the two participants (EU and Russia). Firstly, the theoretical background for sanctions is provided, explaining their meaning and instruments which they use. Secondly, the overview of the Ukrainian conflict is conducted together with a brief review of the economic restrictions which were implemented, as well as the Russian counter-sanctions. The empirical part is firstly explaining the effects of the restrictions on the both economies and then introducing the state of the bilateral trade flows between the EU and Russia before the imposition of the sanctions. The most important part of the thesis is the gravity model conducted in the third chapter, which is trying to estimate the effects of the sanctions on the EU-Russian trade flows using two approaches. One of them is conducted with the help of regression analysis and a dummy variable which controls for the sanctions effect. The other one is predicting the values of exports without the disturbance of the sanctions and then comparing the results with the real values of the export for the years examined. The results of these analyses have proven the expectations about the negative impact of the sanctions on the trade flows between the EU and Russia.

5 Abstract This thesis aims to provide an overview of Russia's narratives surrounding the anti-Russian sanctions implemented by the West in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis. Employing the concept of "strategic narratives", the thesis aspires to outline the content and usage variation of Russia's strategic communication regarding the sanctions regime. After exploring what countries can, in theory, do to defend themselves against sanctions, it was predicted that Russia would strive to reach two goals with its strategic narratives, delegitimizing the sanctions regime and downplaying the sanctions' negative economic effects. The qualitative method of thematic analysis was used to explore the statements of Russia's political leaders on the sanctions and found that Russia indeed seeks to delegitimize the sanctions and downplay their effects. When investigating the usage of the two strategic narratives over time with the help of a quantitative Chi-square test, no significant differences could be found between economically turbulent and prosperous times for two out of three politicians, with the third one resorting more often to the delegitimizing strategic narrative in economically prosperous times. Meanwhile, two other external factors were identified as significantly influencing the strategic narratives' usage...

Pavla Ksiazkiewiczová Německo-ruské vztahy na pozadí ukrajinské krize a rusko- gruzínské války Abstract The thesis examines the German response to the Ukrainian Crisis in 2008 and the Russo- Georgian War in 2014. On the background of these two conflicts, I would like to demonstrate the German-Russian relations and their deterioration in the past years. My main research question was why did Germany decide to support and advocate the EU sanctions against Russia during the Ukrainian Crisis in 2014, when they did not promote such a solution in the 2008 during the Russo-Georgian War. My hypothesis is that German foreign policy shifted from the economic interests-oriented approach towards norm-oriented one. I am working with the theory Foreign policy analysis, which studies the management of international relations and state's activities. This theory can be understood as a critique towards dominant structural approach in international relations because it says that foreign policy is determined by the domestic policy. I constructed the German response to the Ukrainian Crisis and the Russo- Georgian War using qualitative discourse analysis. With this method I am analyzing the statements of those actors, who influence German foreign policy.

Finland is nowadays a prosperous Nordic country, a member of the European Union, supporter of the EU-Russian relations and is one of the most developed economies in the world. Finland still has a unique role in maintaining friendly relations with Russia and therefore we can assume that Finland does not pursue NATO membership, because it would most definitely be perceived as threatening by the Russians. The Ukrainian crisis changed views of many people on Russian foreign relations and made the public, politicians and entire countries question what is Russia capable of and whether it should be perceived as a threat. Because of the Ukrainian Crisis, opinions in Finland are changing and developing and the NATO membership is seen from a brand new perspective and the much treasured policy of nonalignment is being reconsidered as well. That is the issue that I am going to research and examine in this thesis. I will describe changes in public opinion on NATO membership and general safety of Finland, because this public opinion has varied over the last decade and the Ukrainian crisis was the reason for these changes. In order to find answers to these issues, I performed a complex analysis of information coming from several sources, as well as results of research of public opinion and interviews with Finnish...

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.

This diploma thesis called "Media framing of the Ukrainian conflict - articles comparison of German and Russian governmental servers concerning the theory of peace journalism" focuses on the extent, to which differ news coverage of Russian progovernmental webpage rt.com and German progovernmental webpage dw.com. It also researches how much these media contribute to potential escalation and de-escalation of the conflict. These results are gained by implementation of the concept of peace and war journalism into analysed articles. Thanks to quantitative and qualitative analyses methods, the research showed that the coverage of the Ukrainian conflict differs in both media. They vary primarily in the extent of contextual insight into the issue, in thematic contents of articles and in descriptions of parties involved in the conflict. Neither of these two media however can be associated with the practice of war or peace journalism according to the findings. They proved to choose certain aspects of the reality and increase its meaning in their articles, but the amount of such interventions cannot be interpreted as inclination to war or peace journalism.

This diploma thesis examines the topic of news coverage of the Ukrainian crisis in the Ukrainian and Russian media in the period between February 2015 and March 2016. The topic of analysis was based on personal interest for the subject. To realize the goals, this work is divided into several parts. The first part of the diploma thesis focuses on the description of the main media theories, including the theory of framing; then the concepts of hybrid war and propaganda, which are necessary for understanding the issue, are described. Then the anatomy of the Ukrainian conflict is explained, specifically the war in Donbas, roots of which go back to 2014. The thesis also includes a description of previous academic studies about the coverage of the Ukrainian crisis in foreign media. The second part of this thesis deals with the analysis of media content about the events in eastern Ukraine, which were disseminated by the Russian state agency TASS and the Ukrainian agency Ukrinform. The next part of this thesis is a description of creating a process of own research, setting research goals and characteristics of the tools, which were used to achieve them. The last part of the thesis describes the results of the implemented content analysis. This work may serve for better understanding the role of the media...

This thesis deals with Angela Merkel's crisis management using the example of the Ukrainian and migration crises in the Polish political discourse. The aim of the research, which relied on the method of content analysis of stenographic transcripts of meetings of the Polish Sejm, was to find out how the Polish political elite perceived crisis management of Angela Merkel as the leader of Germany and the EU in these crises, what motivation they thought accompanied these actions, and what this showed about the Polish political scene itself. Before Angela Merkel left the chancellor's chair after 16 years, she was regarded as one of the most powerful world leaders, having led Germany and the EU through several major crises. However, many of the German Chancellor's actions have become divisive within the EU and, as the example of Poland has shown, also in the internal politics of the Member States. The analysis has revealed that the assessment of Angela Merkel's policies by Polish MPs mirrors the internal political split between the two major Polish parties, the Civic Platform and Law and Justice.