Morphological Analysis of Narratives of the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict in Western Academia and Think-Tank Community

Abstract

This paper examines representations of the ongoing conflict in and around Ukraine by scholars and policy analysts in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, and Poland. Combining strategic narrative analysis and conceptual morphology, we deconstruct the main narratives of the conflict, identify the structural concepts of each narrative and analyze their use. We identify six key narratives of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict according to their presentation of what happened and their proposed way out of the conflict. In each country, the predominant approaches reflect a certain degree of coherence between political preferences and academic/analytical ideas.