Discursive strategies shift in U.S. Governmental discourse on Russia and Ukraine: a corpus-assisted discourse analysis across the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations

The Russia–Ukraine war constitutes a major conflict of the twenty-first century, while the role of U.S. governmental discourse in shaping international interpretations of the war remains insufficiently examined. The present corpus-assisted discourse study (CADS) draws on a corpus of official White House online records to examine the U.S. governmental discourse on Russia and Ukraine across the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations (2014–2024). By analysing twelve discourses identified through grouping the collocates of “Russia” and “Ukraine”, this study finds that U.S. positions toward Russia and Ukraine have undergone multiple shifts over the past decade thereby extending the traditionally static perspective within Othering theory. These discursive shifts reflect both policy adjustments and the ways in which U.S. governmental discourse adapts to evolving international realities.