Russian narratives of the war in Ukraine as reflected in the Serbian and Polish press

The article’s main purpose is to understand the differences in the perceptions of Russian narratives in post-communist European countries by examining the role of the local media after February 2022. The research question is: What factors determine the degree of official Russian narratives’ influence on media discourses about the Russian–Ukrainian war of 2022 in Central and South-Eastern Europe (the cases of Poland and Serbia)? The paper is based on a discourse analysis of articles in major Polish and Serbian quality national broadsheet daily newspapers and online news portals (Rzeczpospolita and Politika) for a six-month period (February 24–August 23, 2022). The article aims to show that the official Russian rhetoric is regularly spread by the local media and that it should be perceived as a tool of the Kremlin's task to change the public opinion in the region.