EIRP Proceedings, Vol 9 (2014)

Abstract

Political crises are increasingly frequent and devastating not only for the population of a state, but also for the international diplomacy. Such an example is the ongoing Ukrainian crisis. Starting from S. Fink’s life cycle of a crisis and T.W. Coombs’s crisis response strategies, I will analyse the evolution of the Ukrainian crisis and the crisis response strategies of three major international actors: Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel. The findings of my study will prove that the denial strategy prevails in Putin’s statement, whereas Obama uses the diminish strategy and Merkel focuses on the bolstering strategy.