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20 August 2024

Understanding Russia’s war against Ukraine: Political, eschatological and cataclysmic dimensions

Katri Pynnöniemi & Kati Parppei

Introduction

Research communities play a key role in assessing and interpreting significance of major military events.Footnote1 Historically, wars have been categorized into regular, irregular, and inter-state wars or distinguished in terms of scale from major wars of global significance to civil wars and wars fought for national liberation. Another set of conceptualizations address developments in specific domains (cyber, economic, information war) or their combination as a hybrid warfare.Footnote2 Inherent in these different conceptualizations are political and normative assumptions in accordance with which research communities explain wars and deem the just or unjust, irrational or rational.Footnote3

At the eve of Russia’s large-scale invasion against Ukraine, many in the western research community continued to think that ‘wars occur due to irrational behaviour or accident’Footnote4 and were therefore surprised by Putin’s decision. This was followed by discussion on reasons why expectations of Russia’s military performance fell short, and the attack did not lead to quick capitulation of Ukraine.Footnote5 Whereas, in the Russian context, escalation of the ten-year long conflict into an invasion (‘special military operation’) was framed with an aura of inevitability.Footnote6 The texts published in the Russian military and military-historical periodicals fell mostly silent on actual conduct of war, and instead, called for systematic destruction of Ukrainian political institutions and society, denied Ukraine’s sovereignty, and blamed the ‘collective West’ for waging a global hybrid war against Russia.Footnote7 The war became thinkable for the Russian political leaders due to the long-term discursive patterns that shaped the way in which they saw the strategic environment and threats to Russia’s national interests.Footnote

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