Full-scale war in Ukraine: reflections of Russian-speaking identities

Abstract

The paper presents the analysis of Russian-speaking identities’ vision and understanding of the war in Ukraine as well as the way it has affected their lives. This armed conflict has become a tragic stage for the Ukrainian people. It has also become a turning point for Russian-speaking identities both living in the RF and immigrating or living in Europe and Great Britain. So, the objective of this article is to address the problem of mental stereotypes and their reconsideration as well as behavioural changes in Russian-speaking identities with the war in Ukraine. The material of the research consists of 100 relevant posts along with users’ comments and reactions (collected between 2022 and 2023), and 10 interviews with Russian-speaking proactive actors of social networks on the Lithuanian segment of Facebook. The interviewees, aged 35-69, live in different countries (the RF, Lithuania, Great Britain, and France) belong to various ethnocultural, religious and social groups and identify themselves as transnational, multiple overlapping identities and express distinctive communicative pragmatic positions concerning the war in Ukraine. The interviews took place in December 2022.