Historical preparation and ideological legitimisation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: a critical discourse

I use imperial nationalists in this article to describe Russian nationalists because they have not sought to create an independent state, understanding 'Russia' to be bigger than the Russian SFSR and Russian Federation in the form of an empire and union. Russian imperial nationalists have not recognised Ukrainians as a separate people, but instead part of the inner core of their empires and unions. Imperial Russian nationalists believe a pan-Russian people is composed of Great, Little, and White Russians, or Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians respectively. In the USSR, Ukrainians were defined as a separate people to Russians, but also understood to be very close 'brothers' who were born together in Kyivan Rus and would always remain together. Imperial nationalism in Vladimir Putin's Russia has stagnated from this Soviet recognition of a Ukrainian people to a Tsarist and White Russian émigré (anti-Bolshevik forces who fled from Russia after the victory of the Bolsheviks) denial of Ukrainians. This article is the first to analyse how this stagnation of Russian imperial nationalism in Putin's Russia mentally prepared Russian society and provided ideological legitimisation for Russia's February 2022 invasion with the goal of destroying Ukrainian identity and replacing it with a Little Russian.