What is Putin thinking?
Putin's speeches reveal his thought patterns and illuminate the Kremlin’s political logic and intentions, which are often misunderstood.
We have amassed a database of more than a thousand speeches made by Vladimir Putin and applied computational linguistics and advanced AI methodologies to process them. Our analytical interface analyzes over a thousand of Putin's statements spanning more than 20 years, collected by RuBase, through computational linguistics and network analysis, enabling an in-depth understanding of the Russian president's thought process that goes beyond conventional wisdom.
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Some takes from the network analysis
State
We have amassed a database of more than a thousand speeches made by Vladimir Putin and applied computational linguistics and advanced AI methodologies to process them. Our analytical interface analyzes over a thousand of Putin's statements spanning more than 20 years, collected by RuBase, through computational linguistics and network analysis, enabling an in-depth understanding of the Russian president's thought process that goes beyond conventional wisdom.
Family
Values have a price. Based on the conventional narrative about 'traditional values,' one would expect Putin to associate family with conservative concepts. However, not during a single term has one of these concepts made its way to the core of his statements about the family. Rather Putin constantly talks about money and material incentives to increase the birth rate. The family for Putin is an economic unit, and values have a tertiary role and do not make up the core of his narratives.
Future
The concept of "future" allows us to illustrate a very technical and significant advantage of the proposed method. While for many other concepts we see clear, stable connections (the same word is repeated many times along with the central one), for "future" we see a very small and weak network throughout the years, even though the concept itself is important for Putin (12th place in mentions). This means that there is no stable and unified vision of the future in the speeches.
Take a look at the graph representation of our analysis
Some takes from the network diagrams
The United States
The US is central to Putin's perspective on international relations (grey in the first diagram), and he views nearly all global affairs through the lens of US actions and policies.
Russkii Mir
While the "Russkii Mir" (“Russian World”) narrative (red in the first diagram) appears peripheral within his broader semantic network, we note the gradual integration of specific red clusters into the main body of terms.
War
The concept of war is woven into discussions of economics and international relations, predominantly in connection with the US. This is why Putin refers to the conflict in Ukraine as a "special military operation" rather than a war, reserving the term "war" for conflicts involving the West.
The Nazi narrative
The Nazi narrative (turquoise in the second diagram) is linked to Ukraine but remains isolated from other Ukraine-related themes. Its usage is primarily pejorative, lacking substantive explanatory value.
The Great Patriotic War
This theme (purple in the second diagram) pertains to domestic affairs and does not contribute to the rhetoric of mobilization against Ukraine. The notion of "Ukrainian Nazism" is disconnected from the Great Patriotic War narrative.
Donetsk and Luhansk
These regions are mentioned mostly within the clusters of "Russian" and "people." Putin's narrative does not associate them with the Ukraine cluster unless discussing the impact on the "Russian people" of these regions.
