Russia’s invasion of Ukraine involved a combination of hard and soft power measures, with geopolitical representations strategically employed to justify violations of international law. Despite their significance for understanding Russia’s regional actions, academic literature has mainly underexplored geopolitical representations. This paper aims to address this gap and answer to the following questions: (1) how did Russia use geopolitical narrations to justify the war against Ukraine, and (2) why did Russian geopolitical representations fail to achieve the aims? The research hypothesis is that 'the purpose of geopolitical narratives of perceived threats from Ukraine was to receive internal support and legitimize the war form the point of view of International Laws'. The research findings suggest that Russia’s initial military intervention was primarily based on a geopolitical narrative portraying Ukraine as an immediate threat through the alleged presence of Nazis, which served as a pretext to justify military action. In reality, this narrative was also used to retain Ukraine as a buffer zone against NATO expansion. This paper examines how geopolitical representations have influenced Russia’s foreign policy and its implications for regional security, and shows how they have been used to justify and sustain Russia’s military actions against Ukraine.
Rashidi et al. (2026) studied this question.