WAR AS PROJECTION COLLECTIVE ALIENATION AND THE DENIAL OF DIFFERENCE A CASE STUDY OF THE UKRAINE – RUSSIA CONFLICT

This article develops a conceptual model of war as a process of collective projection rooted in alienation and the denial of difference. Drawing on phenomenological insights into inner multiplicity and mechanisms of projection previously articulated at the level of individual consciousness, the study extends these dynamics to the collective and geopolitical scale. War is interpreted not merely as a political or military event, but as an ontological failure of integration, in which societies externalize unacknowledged internal conflicts by constructing an enemy embodying disowned traits. Using the Ukraine – Russia conflict as a case study, the article analyzes how the persistent refusal to recognize difference – linguistic, cultural, and national – generates escalating tension and symbolic violence. Despite shared historical, cultural, and anthropological roots, the denial of Ukrainian otherness has functioned as a structural mechanism of alienation, producing an irresolvable contradiction that culminates in open conflict. The analysis demonstrates how collective projection operates through cultural narratives, media, education, and propaganda to stabilize an externalized image of the enemy, thereby obscuring internal contradictions and avoiding collective responsibility. The article situates this process within a broader civilizational context characterized as an epoch of rupture, marked by accelerating technological power, unintegrated social trauma, and declining ethical self-regulation. From this perspective, war emerges as a manifestation of unresolved collective fragmentation rather than an isolated geopolitical anomaly. Finally, the study argues that sustainable post-conflict peace cannot be achieved through suppression, domination, or symbolic erasure of difference. Instead, peace requires the conscious integration of collective plurality, the acknowledgment of projected aspects of identity, and the assumption of responsibility for internal contradictions. By reframing war as a failure of collective integration, the article contributes to peace studies, phenomenological social theory, and conflict research, offering an alternative lens through which contemporary conflicts may be understood and metabolized rather than endlessly reproduced.