Abstract:

The paper aims to study the changes of international journalism in the Eurasian Economic Union. The Union was established in 2014. It consists of five member-states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. The Union has been considered as a tool of Russian soft power aiming to establish a common market and common information space (Markushina, 2020). The paper examines consequences of ‘Special military operation’, started in 2022, to the Russian soft power resources in international news reporting and public discussions in mass media in the Union. Many authors study the strategy and tools of Russian soft power (Laruelle, 2021; Sergunin, Karabeshkin, 2015; Ospanova, Rakhmatulin, 2018; Simons, 2019). Obviously, Russia applies extensive efforts to build a prominent country image and to promote a strong leadership in global politics. The Eurasian Economic Union is one of the successful integration projects for Russia, which combines both soft and hard power (Ospanova, Rakhmatulin, 2018). However, Ageeva argues that “every year more and more CIS countries prefer exclusive cooperation with Russia to a multi-vector policy” (Ageeva, 2021). Probably, the same process gradually gathers momentum in the Eurasian Economic Union at least in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It has been found that many points of disagreements provoke further decline of symbolic leadership of Russia. The paper reports recent differences in international journalism and media policy in the member-states of the Eurasian Economic Union.