Obama's and Putin's rival discourses on Ukraine

What is it about?

In the hypocritical system of state sovereignty, the rules of the game are determined by the powerful: it is they who decide whether to play the card of humanitarianism, which Putin used with regard to Ukraine, or the card of sovereignty, with which Obama intended to outplay Putin. In order to play the sovereignty card, Obama needed to establish an impossible unity of the Ukrainian nation; to play the humanitarianism card, Putin needed to create a Southeast lacking internal splits. Reducing all the social complexities and establishing strict dividing lines, both Obama and Putin only contributed to the exacerbation of the Ukrainian conflict.

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Why is it important?

According to the dominant narrative adopted in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. What this conventional narrative tends to overlook, however, is that Putin’s vision of the Maidan was shared by many (but not all) people living and working in the southeastern regions of Ukraine. It is important to recognize that the unity of Ukraine (Obama's discourse) or the unity of the Southeast (Putin's construction) appear only through specific articulations leading to specific political outcomes.

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