Abstract
Putin’s Russia has repeatedly employed information warfare in connection with the state’s aggressive foreign policy in the country’s Near-Abroad, and towards the collective West. Nowhere is this more evident than in Russia’s relations with Ukraine from 2014 to present. While Russia’s conflictual relationships are typically examined from a security dilemma lens, there is a need to reevaluate this analysis using the ontological security framework, and further need to pay special attention to the role of cultural memory practices in state ontological security seeking. The collapse of the USSR and the deterioration of Russia’s global superpower status constitute a loss of national identity that the Russian regime has sought to reconstruct not only through military intervention, but also through cultural memory practices, namely in the form of propaganda narratives. Propaganda has been instrumental in the regime’s efforts at crafting and maintaining a national identity and justifying aggressive foreign policy to both domestic and Russian-speaking foreign audiences. Despite the centrality of propaganda narratives in Russian foreign policy, there is limited information about the impact of such propaganda on levels of public support and legitimization of the regime’s actions. This analysis of the Russian American diaspora’s perception of the regime’s prominent propaganda narratives illustrates a mixed result and potentially showcases the limited global influence of such cultural memory appeals.