Russia’s strategic communication during the Ukraine crisis (2013–2014): Victims, hypocrites, and radicals

Abstract

The article retrospectively looks at Russia’s strategic communication during the Ukraine crisis (2013–2014) in light of the ongoing Russian-Ukraine conflicts. Russia’s strategic communication campaign, especially the sophisticated use of state-sponsored international broadcaster-Russia Today (RT)-has been proven to raise sympathy, distract attention and delay effective reactions from the Ukranian government and NATO. RT’s strategic mediatisation of the Ukraine crisis not only fermented a favourable environment for Russia’s annexation of Crimea but set up the meta-narratives and operational framework for the subsequent influence operation practiced by the Russian government during the current Russo-Ukraine war. The article adopts a multimodal discourse analysis to elicit RT’s identity narratives about three main actors during the Ukraine crisis: Russia, the West, and Ukraine. By analysing RT’s YouTube audio-visual representation of the Ukraine crisis, the research finds that RT has applied a victimisation strategy to legitimise Russia’s military intervention in the Annexation of Crimea as a defencive counterattack. The West is accused of provoking a divide between Russia and Ukraine and being an unreliable partner and hypocritical norm-upholder. The Ukrainian components are dichotomously represented. While the pro-Eu protestors and the interim government are framed in line with violence, disorder, and neo-Nazism, the ejected pro-Russian Yanukovych government is legitimised as a democratically elected government, and its policy is aggressively crushed by the pro-Eu protestors. The empirical research suggests that RT’s discursive construction of the Ukraine crisis is built on a divisive script between a victimised pro-Russia club and an aggressive pro-EU camp. By reflecting upon RT’s strategic mediatisation of the Ukraine crisis, the paper seeks to illuminate the historical continuance and variation of Russia’s strategic communication in the post-cold war era. It thus aims to make a meaningful addition to the study of Russian propaganda and shed historical insights to make sense of Russia’s ever-intensifying information campaign during the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War.