Authors

Victoria Vdovychenko¹; Vlad Vernygora²;  ¹ Aston University, UK;  ² University of Lapland, Finland

Discussion

The full-scale war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine catalyzed a range of monumental challenges for the international system (in general) and the European Union’s foreign policy (in particular). In the context of Ukraine, its aspirations to join the EU one day soon makes the country undertake unprecedented reforms and instrumentalise its efforts to make a difference in geo-strategic sense. It appears to be that there is a possibility to detect a particular new way that is chosen by Ukraine in order to have an effectively decisive impact on the EU-originated geo-strategic approach and then get this impact measured up. Known to be protracted in decision making, the EU demonstrated its unity by responding expeditiously to the unprovoked aggression of the Russian Federation imposing a range of more robust sanctions and sending military aid to Ukraine.


Building on a growing body of literature that is making the use of strategic narrative theory for measuring an impact of a given factor on policy making and governance, this material aims at empirically engaging with a) the addresses of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made to the parliaments and the nations of the EU Member States and the appeals of the people of Ukraine made in the period from 24 February until 23 June 2022 and b) the EU’s policy-changing decision on defence and security as well as further enlargement to see if these are positively interlinked, impact wise.


Methodologically, process tracing and discourse analysis are applied in order to observe how President Zelenskyy’s direct communication with the foreign audiences of different kinds commenced a new era in framing his own country’s interrelations with the entire EU and making a tremendous impact on the latter’s foreign policy. This paper argues that this situation creates a new trend in research on Europe, interlinking it with a grand-debate on the future of our current international system.