Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

Conflicts should be analyzed in terms of a full spectrum conflict including discourse. There are more means to achieve an end goal than through the kinetic force such as military means. The invasion of Ukraine 24th of February 2022 was the culmination of many years of soft and hard power practiced by the Russian state. 

With a thematic content analysis on the Russian President Putin’s address to the Nation 18th of March 2014 and 21st of February 2022 the rethoric was separated into themes and analyzed with two theories. The first was soft and hard power where the themes of attraction- and coercion-based rhetoric was applied to the analysis. The second was legitimacy theory, which entailed that rethoric is a mean to gain support towards a grand strategic policy by establishing the national interest, defining threats, course of action and mobilizing the necessary resources within the state.

The results showed that in the first speech soft and hard power was more prominent since there was no official involvement from the Russian state in the conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk region of Ukraine that needed to be legitimized. There was an attempt to influence the Ukrainian government and population to change their policies in a more favorable direction with the use of soft and hard power. The second speech was more in line of legitimacy where the Russian state was about to engage military and thus needed to garner the approval of the Russian state and population to be able to mobilize the resources necessary to accomplish such grand strategic agenda.