Írta: Elena Moiseeva

Part V: The Civilizational Turn (Late 2022–2024) – From „Special Operation” to „Holy War”

5.1 The Annexation Speech and the „Satanism” Charge

By September 2022, as the initial „Special Military Operation” faltered and partial mobilisation was declared, the Russian rhetoric underwent a profound shift. The conflict was no longer framed merely as a security operation to protect Donbas but as a global existential conflict against a metaphysical evil. The Annexation Speech of September 30, 2022, marked the transition to this „Civilizational Phase.”

In this speech, Putin framed the war as a battle against „pure Satanism” emanating from the West. He accused the West of rejecting „faith and traditional values” and promoting a „religion in reverse.” This rhetoric was not metaphorical; it was amplified by the Russian Orthodox Church, with Patriarch Kirill characterising the war as a struggle against the Antichrist. This spiritual dimension serves to mobilise the conservative base and frame the conflict as a holy duty, elevating the stakes beyond mere territorial acquisition.

This „Satanism” rhetoric marks a departure from the mimicry of Western legal norms. The US never justified the Iraq or Afghan wars as battles against „Satan” (despite Bush’s use of „Axis of Evil” and an inadvertent reference to a „crusade,” the official justification remained secular and security-based). Russia, however, began to position itself as the „Katechon” — the biblical force withholding the antichrist — defending not just Russia, but humanity itself from Western moral decay.

5.2 The „Golden Billion” and the Anti-Colonial Pose

Simultaneously, Russia adopted the posture of the leader of a global „anti-colonial” movement – a role that to this day it can credibly represent due to the Soviet legacy. In speeches throughout 2023 and 2024, Putin railed against the „Golden Billion”—the population of the West that allegedly consumes the world’s resources at the expense of the Global South.

This narrative argues that the „rules-based order” championed by the US is a euphemism for „neocolonialism.” By framing the war in Ukraine as a revolt against US hegemony, Russia seeks to align itself with Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Putin posits that the West is „racist and neo-colonial” and that Russia is fighting for the „sovereignty” of all nations against a homogenising globalist dictatorship. The evolution from previous rhetoric is clear; first, Russia proposes that it is acting on the same principles as the US, with the same modus operandi; then, when it gets called out for the clear and major differences, Russia starts to point at a deeply rooted bias in the international order in a bid to alienate the US from the emerging countries.

This, in a sense, still is a strategic inversion of the US „Democracy Promotion” narrative.

• US Narrative: The world is divided into „Democracies” and „Autocracies.” The US mission is to support freedom and human rights against tyranny. Liberal institutionalism is described as universal, and non-participation or non-compliance with the rules results in serious sanctions, embargoes, international isolation or even open military conflicts.
• Russian Narrative: The world is divided into the „Sovereign Majority” and the „Colonialist Minority” (The Golden Billion). Russia’s mission is to break the monopoly of the West and usher in a multipolar world, where one set of values cannot be unilaterally applied to or forced on any player in the international arena.

This rhetorical pivot explains Russia’s heavy investment in disinformation campaigns in Africa and the activities of the Africa Corps (formerly Wagner). The war in Ukraine is presented to the Global South not as a war of imperial conquest, but as the first battle of a new world order that will liberate them from Western financial and political dominance. The rhetoric explicitly attacks the „colonial” nature of Western economic sanctions and the freezing of Russian assets as theft, further solidifying this „us vs. them” economic dichotomy.

Part VI: Escalation and Nuclear Rhetoric (2024–2025) – The „Existential Phase”

6.1 The Karaganov Doctrine: „A Difficult but Necessary Decision”

As the war of attrition ground on into 2023 and 2024, a new, darker strand of rhetoric emerged regarding the use of nuclear weapons. This was spearheaded by influential foreign policy advisor Sergey Karaganov in his provocative article „A Difficult but Necessary Decision”. Karaganov argued that the West had lost its fear of nuclear escalation and that to break its will, Russia might need to lower the threshold for nuclear use, potentially striking targets in Europe to „sober up” the West and prevent a larger global catastrophe.

Karaganov’s argument framed nuclear use not as an act of aggression, but as a humanitarian act to „save humanity” from a looming World War III caused by Western recklessness. „By breaking the West’s will… we will also save humanity,” he argued. While Putin publicly distanced himself from the most extreme versions of this proposal, the discourse served to normalise the idea of nuclear first use in the Russian public sphere, followed by lowering the institutional threshold required to launch nuclear strikes.

6.2 Doctrinal Shifts and the Long War

The official nuclear doctrine was indeed updated in 2024 and 2025 to reflect this heightened stance. The new doctrine considers aggression by a non-nuclear state (Ukraine) with the participation or support of a nuclear state (NATO) as a joint attack on the Russian Federation, potentially triggering a nuclear response. This modification explicitly lowers the threshold, moving from „threat to the existence of the state” to threats against „sovereignty” and territorial integrity (which now includes the annexed regions of Ukraine).

This evolution can be compared to the shift in US strategy post-9/11 with the „Bush Doctrine” of pre-emption.

• Bush Doctrine (2002): The US reserved the right to strike pre-emptively against threats before they fully materialised, justifying the invasion of Iraq. It expanded the definition of „imminent threat.”
• Putin’s Nuclear Doctrine (2024/2025): Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to conventional threats that undermine its sovereignty.

Both doctrines lower the bar for the use of extreme force in the name of security. However, the US focused on pre-emptive conventional force to stop WMDs. Russia is threatening pre-emptive nuclear force to stop a conventional defeat. This rhetorical escalation is designed to induce „strategic ambiguity” and fear in Western capitals, fracturing the coalition supporting Ukraine.

6.3 Valdai 2025: The „Post-Global” World

By 2025, the rhetoric has stabilised into a vision of permanent confrontation. In his Valdai speeches of 2024 and 2025, Putin declared that „Western hegemony is over” and that the world has entered a period of „managed chaos”. The war in Ukraine is no longer treated as a temporary anomaly but as the crucible for a new „multipolar” world order.

The rhetoric focuses heavily on the economic resilience of Russia, contrasting it with the alleged „deindustrialisation” of Europe caused by the severing of ties with Russian energy. Putin mocks European economic struggles as self-inflicted wounds driven by subservience to the US, further pushing the „puppet” narrative onto the entire European Union. The peace proposals offered in June 2024 — demanding Ukrainian withdrawal from all four annexed regions and a renunciation of NATO membership — were framed not as a compromise but as a final offer before the „real” war begins.

Part VII: Further upscaling of the war rhetoric and emerging extremism

This summer, an unusually candid article appeared in the Russian state-linked journal Разведчик (“The Intelligence Officer”), a publication intended for the intelligence community. Rather than focusing on operational developments, the text outlines the ideological architecture through which Moscow seeks to justify and reinterpret the war.

The article is structured around four central motifs. First, it depicts the post-Soviet period as “thirty years of decadence and uncertainty,” framing the entire era as one of spiritual, political and moral decline. Second, it presents the “Special Military Operation” as a predetermined historical necessity, elevating it from a political decision to an identity-forming event. Third, it portrays the war as a “trial by fire,” through which internal decay is revealed, and moral regeneration is made possible. Finally, it describes a projected national rebirth—termed “paleo-genesis”—as the inevitable outcome of this purifying confrontation.

This narrative arc—glorious past, subsequent decline, purification through violence, and collective rebirth—draws heavily on the political mythologies of the twentieth century. In this framework, war is not conceived as an instrument of policy but as an internal revolutionary act promising societal transformation, the defeat of an internal enemy, and the eradication of corruption. Between the lines, the text implicitly acknowledges the scale of human and material losses. It also introduces the notion of the “sin of missing the historical chance,” a coercive ideological category aimed at discouraging dissent and demanding total societal mobilisation. But bloodshed is framed not only as a means of neutralising “traitors,” but also as a guarantee against future mismanagement and elite predation. This is yet again a clear shift from even previously applied rhetorical tricks; the war is not just simply a moral obligation to stop the spread of Nazism and genocides; it is not merely countering an existential military threat on the border; it is not some sort of Holy War against a global cabal – it is, instead, a vehicle for Russian national rebirth. The article illustrates how the Russian state attempts to remythologise the war for domestic audiences, reframing suffering as a moral test, violence as purification, and victory as existential necessity.

Part VIII: Comparative Table of War Justifications

Russia’s war rhetoric has evolved from imitating international legalism and historical denialism to an all-encompassing civilisational narrative, gradually shedding any pretence of conventional geopolitical logic. What began as an argument about “historical unity,” alleged genocide, and the legal choreography of Article 51 has expanded into a grand ideological project that borrows, distorts, and ultimately inverts Western interventionist language. By mimicking Kosovo, Iraq and Libya, Moscow attempts to cloak aggression in a familiar grammar of legality and protection, while simultaneously accusing the West of neocolonial hypocrisy. As the conflict dragged on, the rhetoric shifted from legal justification to metaphysical confrontation — a holy war against “Satanism,” the supremacy and oppression/exploitation of the “Golden Billion,” and the collapse of traditional civilisation. The war is eventually even framed as purification, renewal and destiny. This narrative architecture serves one purpose: to recast a costly, attritional conflict as an existential, transformative struggle in which Russia’s suffering becomes both necessary and redemptive.

And as a summary and conclusion to the ideas explained above, one can truly only guess whether Russia can be satiated with territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality in a possible future peace deal. We can see that explicit expansionism and territorial claims were never really the primary rhetoric or goal of Russia throughout the war in Ukraine. It served as a tool for increasing securitisation in Ukraine but was never considered to be the primary ambition. To synthesise the rhetorical divergences and convergences with the justifications used by the US, the following table compares specific US interventions with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.