Divergent visions on the war in Ukraine

This chapter focuses on how Putin and Zelenskyy addressed world audiences in the first three months after the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army in February 2022. Using quantitative semantic analysis, we obtain a broad picture of the topic areas covered by each leader’s speeches. Our data show that Putin devoted relatively little space to Ukraine in his speeches, and paid more attention to Russia’s economic and technological development. His language was highly future-oriented with a strong emphasis on his personal intentions and strategic goals, and a monologic style marked by an absence of negatives or attenuation. This approach may have been motivated by a desire to emphasize his personal authority, but also to insulate himself from negative consequences of the war. By contrast, Zelenskyy’s speeches centred almost entirely on the conflict, with graphic accounts of its effects. Zelenskyy’s speeches contain a much greater number of personal pronouns, particularly first person and allusions to “our people”, as well as more emotionally laden lexis. His discourse is often outward-directed, appealing to western countries and “the world” for solidarity with Ukraine. In conclusion, during the early months Putin tried to downplay the conflict and its possible consequences, employing euphemistic, non-emotional terms and merging his references to Ukraine into a wider, future-oriented discourse about Russia’s development. By contrast, Zelenskyy’s emotional discourse centred on conflict and the Russia-inflicted destruction, launching strong appeals to the rest of the world for support. These findings are discussed in relation to the two leaders’ goals, the pragma-rhetorical strategies used to communicate these to their target audiences.