"Without you": distancing from the "Russian world" in statements by Ukrainian high-ranking officials

The “Russian world” conceptualised as a notion of civilizational unity grounded in linguistic, historical, ethnocultural, and religious components, has been the subject of various interdisciplinary studies. This paper aims to investigate linguistic strategies for delineating the distinctions between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, as well as for showcasing a divergence from the “Russian world” ideology and its principal components, such as the Russian language and culture, the Russian Orthodox church and shared memory and history. Employing a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach, this study examines speeches, statements, social media posts, and select interviews of Ukrainian high-ranking officials, including Volodymyr Zelenskyi, Dmytro Kuleba, Oleksii Danilov, Mykhailo Podoliak, and Metropolitan Epiphany.