The Ukrainian position and not only of its presidency is first of all the defence against an utterly existential threat, i.e. the declared intention of the Russian government to extinguish Ukraine as an independent polity and achieve imperial and national "unity" of the imagined community of a so-called Great Russian people, consisting allegedly of Russians, Little Russians (not to say Ukrainians) and Belarusians. The mere existence of Ukraine is seen as detrimental to the "Eurasian" national interests of Russia in a global "Holy War" against alleged "Western imperialism" and liberal society denounced as "Satanist". The Ukrainian polity, which most often is not defined ethnically but politically, sees itself as serving in the region as an example of how to establish and defend democratic procedures according to international and not least European values. This in itself represents a provocation for the illegitimately elected ruler of Russia, who is explicitly defining Russia’s status of a global power by being able to set rules of a so called "new" and "just global order" on its own. The Ukrainian government tries to gather global support for the defence of its population, territorial integrity and sovereignty according to the UN Charter vis-à-vis an openly declared military alliance of Russia with China–which aims to treat Taiwan like Ukraine–, North Korea and Iran. As Russia pretends to be an anti-colonial global power, despite leading this war (not seldom seen as colonial), Ukraine positions itself as a decolonial democracy, betting on India to get help and fighting in Africa against Russian military forces.

In the Yugoslav successor states, the perception of the war against Ukraine is strongly influenced by historical experiences that have both local and global dimensions. This is already evident in the frequent equation of contemporary Russian neo-imperialism with Greater Serbian nationalism, which can be found in Croatian and Bosnian public discourse. As far as the discourses on the war in Serbia and the Serbian entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina are concerned, the denunciation of American imperialism as the main driving force behind the war, while at the same time calling for Serbian 'neutrality', is reminiscent of the rhetoric of the Tito era and is an obvious attempt to tie in with the idea of non-alignment. At the same time, a reception of travelling concepts of geopolitics, including American Cold War theorists as well as Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent source of inspiration for Russian neo-imperialism, can be observed in contemporary Serbia - intensified, but not simply triggered, by the war. On another level, religiously informed solidarities, each with its own history and linked to transnational notions of commonality and belonging, are manifest, particularly in the case of Orthodoxy and Islam, but also with regard to Roman Catholicism and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Russia's war against Ukraine has been dealt with by the UN and the International Court of Justice, two institutions that embody key pillars of the international order: international law, human rights and the sovereignty of all states. The debates in the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, the investigation of war crimes or the charges brought by Ukraine against Russia at the ICJ have been widely commented on in the international press. Historical references and interpretations play a key role. They range from the question of when post-Soviet Russia's expansionist policy began to reflections on the origins of the current international order, which go back to the First and Second World Wars. They also include comparisons with other military conflicts, war crimes and genocides in the 20th century, as well as comparisons with the UN and ICJ responses to Hamas's violent attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent war in Gaza. These political commentaries are an instructive source for future global historical research on the twentieth century, a century that increasingly appears to have been characterized by an international order that promised peace through collective security mechanisms and justice through international law, while at the same time being deeply marked by global and regional power hierarchies, violence and double standards.