Authors

Eric Pardo Sauvageot¹;  ¹ Deusto University , Spain

Discussion

This paper places itself in the Euromaidan crisis and within the debate of ontological security, taking as a starting point the puzzle of how if Russia vied for Ukraine´s integration into a Eurasian Union, it redirected into a different imperative after its failure: neo-imperial expansion to "defend" Russian populations abroad. The ambition is not to explain how Russia switched from one imperative to another, although an attempt will be made to pin down the reversal to possible particular triggers. Rather, this paper will deal from a theoretical perspective with the concept of ontological vector, positing that once the Eurasian vector failed, reaction through an alternative pan-Russian vector was possible due to the prior existence of such dimension in Russia´s composite identity framework. Interesting extant questions as for how anxiety is managed and what its complex relation to fear is may benefit from this novel conceptualization. Our hypothesis is that an absence of alternative ontological vectors from the pre-existing pool of different identities may arguably preclude reaction in the face of existential challenges, whereas the existence of alternative ontological vectors will, on the contrary, by turning anxiety into fear, enable a escape from paralysis and thus, a reaction to restore ontological security.