Triumphant Defender or Victim of History? Subjecthood and Victimhood in Zelensky-Led Discourse in Information War Against Russia

Since the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian people’s mediatized hardship as displayed via official communication channels served as evidence of heroic martyrdom and unbreakable spirit. This paper studies how the roles of the heroic warrior and the serial victim are represented in Volodymyr Zelensky’s (auto-recorded) speeches to communicate power to English-speaking audiences on Twitter. This is undertaken via critical discourse analysis as described in the works by Theo Van Leeuwen, as the paper studies how the Ukrainian president uses recontextualization to authorize the Ukrainian information war effort on three levels: personal bravery facing adversity directly on the front lines; role model (authority of a courageous leader who protects his people); of tradition (referring to hundreds of years of Ukrainian heroic military history). The study finds that Volodymyr Zelensky allocates the given roles to himself via individuation (heroic leader) and assimilation (voice of the collective martyr). In his self-recorded videos, he briefly ceases to be a function of state and makes his authority personal, as he becomes the living symbolic representation of Ukraine’s fierce independence and proof that Ukraine is ultimately worthy of having its say on the international arena. In addition to that, in his official addresses, Zelensky’s “we the Ukrainian people” communication device serves predominantly as a vessel for emotionally charged universally understood moral victimhood (grief, indignation, sadness), and accentuates dependence of Ukraine on its Western partners, as well as the desire to be united with the Western family (EU, NATO). The study also explores how Zelensky’s personas are reunited in framing the Ukrainian war effort as a timeless heroic myth via legitimization strategies like rationalization (Ukrainian subjecthood is useful for protecting Europe from Russia) and moral evaluation (inhumane treatment of civilians by the Russian army which must be stopped). The paper also analyzes how different levels of Zelensky’s authority are occasionally in conflict with each other and potentially undermine the Ukrainian information war effort (e.g. the hero striving to reclaim the unjustly occupied territories vs the victim’s desire to finish the war and prevent loss of more life; personal bravery facing drone strikes in the open air vs the role model’s responsibility to save his own life and thus preserve the stability of Ukraine; military traditions of old being in stark contrast with some of the mobilization practices in Ukraine). Furthermore, the article explores the disruptive effects of platform-native self-recording as means of political communication, Volodymyr Zelensky being a prominent example of successfully navigating contested information environments during challenging times.