Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked a fundamental rupture in the European security environment—what some authors have described as “a reversal in the European security and political order” (Nizhnyakov and Moshow 2024: 489). As a geopolitical watershed, the conflict “has affected the very institutional development of the EU, its individual policies, and the Union’s approach to neighbouring regions” (Nizhnyakov and Moshow 2024: 489). While existing research has largely focused on the political and institutional consequences of this rupture, considerably less attention has been paid to how the discursive construction of Russia within official EU discourse has evolved over time. This contribution addresses this gap by providing a systematic analysis of how the European Commission narratively constructed Russia as an enemy between 2022 and 2025.

Theoretically, the contribution draws on discursive institutionalism and narrative theory. Discursive institutionalism, as developed by Schmidt (2006, 2008), emphasises the central role of discourse in shaping political action, institutional development, and identity formation. In the case of the European Commission, narrative theory makes it possible to trace how Russia is portrayed as the aggressor, how Ukraine is constructed as a victim in need of solidarity, and how the EU presents itself as a principled geopolitical actor responding to a systemic threat (Rabinovych and Pintsch 2024; Silva 2024; Costa and Barbé 2023; Gürkan 2024; Håkansson 2024; Nizhnikau and Moshes 2024).

Methodologically, the contribution combines narrative analysis with the discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis. This combined methodological framework enables both a macro-level examination of overarching narrative logics and a micro-level analysis of the discursive strategies through which these narratives gain force and legitimacy. The analysed corpus consists of 600 European Commission press releases on the war in Ukraine, issued between the outbreak of the conflict on 24 February 2022 and the present day, i.e. 31 December 2025. The contribution examines how Russia is not only constructed as an external “Other” but also actively positioned as an adversary within a broader narrative of European moral agency and geopolitical awakening.

Over the last years, the demise of the Liberal International Order (LIO) accelerated (Nye, 2017; Mearsheimer, 2019; Goddard et al., 2025). As the core foundations of the LIO crumble, the announced return of power politics appears to materialize (Goddard et al., 2024; Mearsheimer, 2026). Against the backdrop of a more competitive, insecure and volatile world, the European Union (EU) toughened the discourse, amid calls for European sovereignty (Juncker, 2018) and strategic autonomy (Borrell, 2020). In this paper we analyse the State of the Union Addresses (SOTEU) from 2010 to 2025, complemented where appropriate by key strategic documents, to answer one central research question: Did the transformation of the international system fundamentally alter the EU’s foreign policy narrative? In particular we are interested in seeing whether there are visible changes in the main characters (and roles) of the story, including both the EU’s own role and who is casted for the ally (adjuvant) or enemy (opponent) roles. Anchored in the Narrative Policy Framework (e.g. McBeth et al., 2007; Jones and McBeth, 2010; Shanahan et al., 2017; Crow and Jones, 2018; Jones et al., 2022; Schlaufer et al., 2022) we conducted a qualitative narrative analysis. The goal is twofold: to highlight structural and contextual elements of a strategic policy narrative (e.g. Antoniades et al., 2010; Miskimmon et al., 2018), while identifying major shifts in the EU’s foreign policy narrative(s), namely how the main actors of this international order in transition are represented. The paper advances the field by providing empirical evidence on how the EU’s narrative(s) evolved within the context of a transitioning international order.

Russia has been actively engaged in a hybrid war against the European Union (EU) for a significant period of time, much earlier than its brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Since then, the Russian efforts to undermine the stability of the European institutions have become even more pronounced and aggressive. Misinformation is one of the key pillars of this hybrid war planting seeds of division and eroding mutual trust, attacking the very foundations on which the EU is based – unity and mutual trust. Against this background, this paper aims to explore the key characteristics of the Russian misinformation campaign against the EU. It then proceeds to analyse the key legal developments in this field, including internal and external developments. Among the latter, the Digital Services Act is at the forefront, imposing significant obligations on platforms used to disseminate misinformation. Among its external tools, sanctions have been used against Russian media serving as a propaganda vehicles for the Russian regime. The article analyses these and other instruments to question whether the legal and policy instruments of the EU are effective in countering Russian misinformation while preserving the EU’s foundational values of democracy, fundamental rights, and freedom of expression.

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has presented Europe not merely with a security challenge, but also a challenge to its self-understanding. As an experimental polity, the EU was ill-prepared for either of these challenges. A polity that was designed to defuse power has limited ability to project it. And a polity whose very construction relied on norms and ideals, experienced that its rhetorical power counts for little when confronted by hard power. The result is a growing gap between the expectations to which the EU gives rise and its capabilities to deliver. Instead of rhetorical self-entrapment leading to a desired set of policies, we see Europe trapped between its ambitions and the lack of means to deliver on them. This logic has had deleterious effects on both Europe and Ukraine. As Volodymyr Zelenskyy argued in January 2026: ‘Europe loves to discuss the future but avoids taking action today’.
The aim of this paper is to discuss this disconnect by surveying conceptual debates about the nature and aim of European integration. François Duchêne’s (1972) conception of ‘civilian power Europe’ anticipated the ‘constructivist turn’ within EU studies in the 1990s, which followed the 1989 peaceful demise of communism in Europe. As the ideal of soft-power Europe appeared vindicated, scholars paid increasing attention to the way actors talked about Europe. Discourse seemed more important than material capabilities, and ‘speaking Europe’ at least as important as ‘acting Europe’. No longer. The combined impact of Russian military aggression and the second Trump administration has significantly altered the EU’s posture in the world. Both political actors and scholars have focused on ‘European sovereignty’, urging a transformation of Europe into a geopolitical project – terms which were frowned upon until fairly recently. Yet, while European leaders spoke increasingly the language of realism, they continued to behave as liberal internationalists would. In response to military escalations, the EU issued statements, condemnations and sanctions. The EU is thus facing an impossible dilemma: to attain a more muscular commitment to its liberal values, it would need to embrace a more traditional understanding of power, which it had long considered obsolete. And yet, if it continues to shy away from massively increasing military assistance to Ukraine and re-building its own military capabilities both at national and European levels, it will have little say in shaping its own future, or indeed its very survival. The EU thus must and yet cannot become truly geopolitical.