Vitalii Lebediuk

This study addresses a significant gap in research on Ukraine’s wartime information environment, which has largely focused on Russian disinformation and external influence operations while paying less attention to the communication of Ukrainian political leaders. It examines how the President of Ukraine has adapted his public rhetoric since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, focusing on shifts in framing, thematic emphasis, and audience differentiation. The analysis draws on a corpus of nightly video addresses, speeches, diplomatic statements, interviews, and addresses to international bodies collected from February 2022 onward. Combining computational text analysis with qualitative discourse analysis, the study examines how changes in presidential messaging are related to battlefield dynamics, domestic political pressures, and international diplomatic cycles. Contrary to expectations that crisis communication converges around a narrow set of legitimising narratives, the findings show that Ukrainian presidential discourse remains highly adaptive. Its thematic repertoire expands and contracts with military and political developments while preserving narrative coherence around resilience, justice, and collective responsibility. The study advances our understanding of democratic leadership under conditions of protracted war and information volatility.