Kill Brother: A Hegemonic Discourse of the Russian Aggression Against Ukraine

Immediately after the second "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, Russia has started a massive hybrid aggression against Ukraine, which includes, along with a limited military component, a massive propaganda offensive. Through this offensive, Russian authorities are seeking to impose on Russia, Ukraine, and the international community a very specific hegemonic discourse, which should to legitimize the right of Russia to control Ukraine and to delegitimize the Ukrainian authorities and Ukraine as a state.

Like the Russian aggression against Ukraine itself, its' discourse is hybrid. It combines elements of the official Soviet discourse of Brezhnev's epoch with elements of archaic Russian religious-political discourse on the Russian State as the sacred center of the world's only true religion – the Russian Orthodoxy.

In accordance with presuppositions of the Soviet discourse, Ukrainians are officially described as "our brothers", "a fraternal people" (the true value of this Soviet euphemism is 'subordinate people'; the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968 was officially named "a fraternal aid"). At the same time, the Ukrainian leadership is stigmatized as "junta", "fascists", and agents of the Americans/the West. The existence of the separate Ukrainian nation is negated, and the denoting this nation ethnonym is deliberately distorted (Ukrainians refer as "ukry" and "ukropy" [the Russian "ukrop" is dill in English]). Ukraine is symbolically interpreted as a brother that should be killed.

In the framework of discourse on the sacred Russian State, the Ukraine is interpreted as a part of the sacred Russian State. Several traditional Orthodox religious symbols, which are geographically associated with Ukraine, are systematically confiscated in favor of Russia (in this purpose, for example, the President Putin personally retold the old legend that Saint Vladimir, the Grand Prince of Kiev who converted the ancient Rus' in Orthodox country, was baptized in Crimea, i.e. on the territory of Russia!).