Putin’s Understanders, Russia’s Normalizers: Discursive Palettes Beyond the East–West Divide

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 episte-mologies – 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 sym-pathetic to or compatible with the Russian officialdom, and deploy them in different theoretical contexts – from neorealist to post-colonial.