State’s Legitimisation of Violence through Strategic Narration: How the Kremlin Justified the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Figures & data

Table 1. The data about the Kremlin’s narrative.

	actor	URL	branch of power	number of texts
1	Prezident Rossii / President of Russia	http://kremlin.ru	executive	50
2	Pravitelstvo Rossii / The Russian Government	http://government.ru	executive	50
3	Sovet Federacii / The Federation Council	http://council.gov.ru	legislative	50
4	Gosudarstvennaya Duma / The State Duma	http://duma.gov.ru	legislative	50

Note: this table summarises the data collected between 21 February 2022–24 November 2023 as presented in the Online Appendix.

Table 2. Narrative polarisation to legitimise violence.

Legitimisation		Delegitimisation
Symbolic figures
H	Hero	P	Perpetrator
Permissible actions toward victims (Heroism [H] / Perpetration [P])
H1	restore honour/remember	P1	ignore suffering/silence
H2	save/protect	P2	abuse/misuse
H3	prevent/predict suffering	P3	hide the truth/demonise
H4	suffer for the common well-being	P4	oppress for self-interest
H5	fail to prevent suffering	P5	fail and cause more suffering

Note: this table is an adaptation of Table 1 in Zavershinskaia (2023a).

Zavershinskaia, Polina. 2023a. Appropriating the Civil Sphere: The Construction of German Collective Identity by Right-wing Populist Actors during the Covid-19 Pandemic. American Journal of Cultural Sociology 4: DOI: 10.1057/s41290-023-00189-2.

 Google Scholar