Language-Related Hybrid Narratives in Russian-Ukrainian Confrontation

The article considers language-related Hybrid narratives that spread in the Ukrainian infospace during the period of independence as an element of Russia's hybrid war. Narrative is a cognitive structure that determines the worldview of a certain circle of individuals and is formed by modeling the semantic field of infospace. Hybrid narratives spread simplistic and primitive ideas, distort the rational perception of reality, often replacing it with an irrational reaction. Due to this, they became an effective tool of RF in deepening internal conflicts and intensifying crisis phenomenon in Ukrainian society. Russia has identified the Russian-speaking population of other countries (especially post-Soviet countries) as one of the main factors of its geopolitical influence in the world, so it is the most active in broadcasting language-related hybrid narratives. In particular, in the Ukrainian information space, there are mobilization narratives that are aimed to unite around the idea of "protection of the Russian language and violated rights of Russianspeakers" (narratives on a common language space, second official language, hostility between Russian-speaking East of Ukraine and Ukrainianspeaking West, etc.) and discrediting narratives on Ukrainian as a national language (about its lack of prospects, provincialism, etc.). Pro-Russian political forces, mass media, the Russian national minority and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, representatives and products of popular culture, etc. become the tools of translation of these stories. Against the backdrop of Russia's clear stance that it views the Russian-speaking population of other countries as a means of geopolitical influence and the use of language-related narratives in its aggression against Ukraine, in Ukraine, at the political level, support for the state language has not yet been identified as a priority security issue and the state has actually existed within the limits set by Russian hybrid narratives, or revived at various stages as a stabilizing Soviet narrative of "two languages – one folk"

Geopolitics · Linguistics · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Ukrainian · Law · Military, Security, and Education Studies

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