Description
This paper explores Russia’s international relations from 2013 to 2022 through studying the role played by Ukraine in Russian state and epistemic discourse. It proposes to study Ukraine-Russia-West relations as a 'trilemma' and asks how Ukraine, as represented in a continuously recrafted Russian political myth of misrecognition, became caught up in a Russian politics of scapegoating; scapegoating which allowed Russia to cope with a sense of being misrecognised by the West and a trauma of having emulated the West too much in the early years after the Cold war; a loss of agency and identity. The paper therefore analyses how Ukraine features in Russia's story of returning to its 'own path' and of challenging the Western project of democracy and human rights promotion. It also traces the labels attached to Ukraine by Russia - from 'weak puppet state' to 'ultranationalist', etc. - and makes the argument that the labels attached to Ukraine by Russia served as a way of projecting Russia's own stigmatas and traumas, stemming from Russia-West interaction, onto Ukraine as Russia's 'liminal other'.
