Russian Aggression against Ukraine and the Making of Refugees

Abstract

This article examines the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the perspectives of Russian ideology, the tools used by the Russian Federation in the war against Ukraine, and refugee-making. The article uses offensive realism as an approach to understanding the actions of Russia against Ukraine. Russian full-scale aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 provoked international crises in numerous dimensions: political, security, humanitarian, and ecological. It became not only a war between countries, but a war between ways of thinking and ideologies. The reasoning and international policies behind this war might have very different and controversial interpretations; however, some explanation can be found by analyzing Russian inner-political discourse during the last two decades and the development of Russian ideology. The key research question of the article concerns the issue of Russian ideology and its role in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.