Not quite “the same enemies and the same friends”: exploring puppet-overlord enemy-crafting in the Donbass and Russia

Rodrigo Melgar and José Antonio Saravia

Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 2025, vol. 33, issue 2, 515-531

Abstract: While a significant literature on puppet states exists, the subject of their enemy crafting and its relationship with that of their overlord is a topic scarcely touched upon in academia. To better understand this, we turn to the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. By mapping constructed enemy mentions during the war in Ukraine we compare their output with that of Russia to see whether they are susceptible to the same trends. Moreover, we sought to discern whether near or far enemies narratives prevail in Russian political discourse. Our findings point towards a discursive alignment throughout time on the part of Donetsk, but not in the case of Luhansk. Moreover, we found a propaganda machine overwhelmingly geared towards near enemy construct in the Donbass republics, whereas that of Russia would be significantly more balanced. Our article covers the period from the 24th of February 2022 to the 5th of October, when the Republics were incorporated to the Russian state.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/25739638.2025.2509251 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cdebxx:v:33:y:2025:i:2:p:515-531

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cdeb20

DOI: 10.1080/25739638.2025.2509251

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe is currently edited by Andrew Kilmister

More articles in Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().