start of Vladimir Putin's presidency in 2000 and in the context of the conflicts in Georgia and
Ukraine (annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Donbas). We apply structural topic
modelling (STM) and focus on the official English-language Kremlin transcripts, a total of
more than 8,000 texts. Our findings demonstrate that these conflicts became important
markers to reveal a gradual shift in the period 2000–2019 away from the prevalence of …