This Forum focuses on a variety of discourses that in one way or another "understand" and normalize the logic of Putin's war against Ukraine. These discourses have different epistemologies-some of them might simply reproduce Russian propagandistic cliches, while others are embedded in-and adjusted to-specific national contexts; some of them emanate from political milieus, while others have academic pedigrees. Of particular interest for the reader is a comparative frame of the Forum that gives floor to European and non-European perspectives on the topic that at some point resonate, engage, and communicate with each other. The authors discuss social and cultural conditions that produce professional and vernacular narratives sympathetic to or compatible with the Russian officialdom, and deploy them in different theoretical contexts-from neorealist to post-colonial.

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Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has transformed all aspects of life in the country, including societal attitudes, national politics and Ukraine’s agency on the international arena. The article seeks to discuss and conceptualise how practices of resilience create discursive spaces for producing and shaping Ukraine’s agency. In other words, how do experiences of resilience in four different spheres (societal, institutional, communicative and subregional) affect Ukraine’s capacity not only to cope with the intervention and survive as a nation, but also to contribute to the future of international security order. The author argues that by containing the Russian army, Ukraine can be viewed as a co-producer of European security, which is particularly acknowledged by European countries bordering on Russia. Ukraine’s agency, as unfolded in 2022, addresses Western countries with an insistent demand to perceive Ukraine as a part of the European normative order.

This contribution to the Forum analyzes narratives unfolding among Estonian Russian speakers who expose different attitudes towards the war in Ukraine. For this analysis the author selected several media platforms and public figures whose speaking positions are representative and typical for-and duly reflect-the entire spectrum of the current Russophone discourses in Estonia. The analysis singles out three distinct yet interconnected discursive positions that prominently feature in the Russophone milieu-pragmatic, popularly geopolitical and counter-normative.