The Role of Denial in Shaping Russian Support for the War Against Ukraine

• In Event: Peace, War, and Social Conflict Panel Session: Culture and Conflict

Abstract

This paper examines how denial structures and sustains Russian support for the war against Ukraine. Rather than treating support as a product of ideological conviction or misinformation alone, the paper proposes denial as a central analytical lens for understanding how individuals reconcile moral discomfort, uncertainty, and political powerlessness. Drawing on 80 in-depth qualitative interviews conducted in two waves in 2022 (winter-spring and autumn), the study analyzes how the same respondents narrate the war over time, allowing for within-person comparison of shifts and stabilizations in their attitudes.
The analysis employs a theoretically informed coding framework grounded in Stanley Cohen’s typology of literal, interpretative, and implicatory denial. The coding scheme distinguishes among (1) objects of denial (e.g., civilian victims, responsibility, intentionality, consequences), (2) types of denial, (3) the functions denial serves (identity preservation, anxiety reduction, loyalty signaling, moral self-protection), and (4) discursive mechanisms through which denial operates (justificatory reframing, fatalistic inevitability, normalization, minimization, and victory inevitability narratives). Emotions are coded as a parallel dimension to capture the affective conditions that enable and stabilize denial practices.
The findings show that support for the war is often sustained not through full ideological endorsement but through adaptive and implicatory forms of denial that allow individuals to acknowledge violence while neutralizing its moral and political implications. Denial operates as a coping mechanism in an authoritarian context, where limited agency, fear of instability, and attachment to national identity create strong incentives to manage dissonance rather than confront it. By conceptualizing denial as dynamic, layered, and emotionally embedded, the paper contributes to the study of public opinion under authoritarianism and offers a framework for analyzing how citizens live with, justify, and normalize war.

Author

• Natalia Savelyeva, UW Madison