The ‘Russian World’ in Baltic Media: A Semantic Analysis of Russian‐Language Newspapers in Lithuania and Latvia

ABSTRACT With the current study, we aim to continue the discussion about what the borders of the Ruskiy Mir—the Russian World —because the war in Ukraine shows that the forces and special services of the Russian Federation were expected to be welcomed as ‘liberators’, but this did not happen. We have examined media outlets in two Baltic countries (Lithuania and Latvia) that are published in Russian. Lithuania is a portal operating on a national scale, but in Latvia, two newspapers are published in two cities where most Russian speakers’ population lives. Although the analysed newspapers initially portrayed the war as a distant or internal problem for Ukraine, our analysis revealed a gradual shift in focus and thematic emphasis. This shift can be partly explained by the increasing difficulty of continuing to cover the war without including broader geopolitical aspects, as well as by the growing international awareness of human rights violations, civilian casualties, and Russia's role in the aggression. The lack of context and the use of euphemisms initially contributed to the persistence of pro‐Russian narratives, but subsequent thematic diversification, especially in the case of Lithuania, demonstrated a growing sensitivity to the global dimension of the war.