Conflicts and Shifts in the Kremlin’s Political Discourse since the Start of the Putin Presidency (2000–2019)

Abstract

This article analyses the content and structure of the Kremlin’s political discourse since the start of Vladimir Putin’s presidency in 2000 and in the context of the conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine (annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Donbas). We apply structural topic modelling (STM) and focus on the official English-language Kremlin transcripts, a total of more than 8,000 texts. Our findings demonstrate that these conflicts became important markers to reveal a gradual shift in the period 2000–2019 away from the prevalence of foreign policy topics to the dominance of domestic issues and Russia’s change of emphasis to bilateral relations with non-Western countries.