‘Russian warship, go fuck yourself’: Romantic narratives of the hero in the war of Ukraine
| Published date | 01 February 2025 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481241303258 |
| Author | Gabriela Pancheva,Amri Azis Ardhelas,Andrea Torresagaton Gil,Alexander Spencer |
| Date | 01 February 2025 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481241303258
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2025, Vol. 27(1) 270 –291
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481241303258
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
‘Russian warship, go fuck
yourself’: Romantic narratives
of the hero in the war of
Ukraine
Gabriela Pancheva, Amri Azis Ardhelas,
Andrea Torresagaton Gil
and Alexander Spencer
Abstract
In times of war, ‘heroes’ play a key role. The romantic construction of the ‘heroes’ that defend a
righteous cause against a more powerful and unjust enemy often serves as a means to legitimise
political narratives and violent actions. The iconic phrase ‘Russian warship, go fuck yourself!’
uttered by a Ukrainian border guard during an imminent Russian attack on Snake Island in February
2022 became a globally known symbol of heroism and resistance that generated great solidarity
against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Taking up notions of hero studies in political science and
International Relations, and utilising a narrative analysis method that focuses on the elements of
setting, characterisation and emplotment, this article examines how British media outlets (The
Guardian, The Times and The Sun) construct the figure of the romantic ‘hero’ within the context of
the Snake Island incident, while it also delves into the possible consequences of such heroisation.
Keywords
conflict, discourse, heroism, narrative, Ukraine
‘Russian warship, go fuck yourself!’ were supposedly the last words of a Ukrainian bor-
der guard on Snake Island who refused to capitulate to the Russian warship cruiser
Moskva and was then bombed and presumably killed (The Telegraph, 2022). This expres-
sion has become a symbol of heroism and resistance to the Russian aggression used in
protests and demonstrations against the Russian invasion of Ukraine around the world. A
Wikipedia page dedicated to this incident has been created and translated into 34 lan-
guages, and t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, pins, face masks, tote bags, and so on have been on
sale on platforms like Amazon (Amazon.com: Russian Warship Go F Yourself, 2024). The
Ukrainian guard that spoke these words has filed an EU trademark application for the
Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Humanities, Magdeburg, Germany
Corresponding author:
Alexander Spencer, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Zschokkestraße 32, Magdeburg 39104,
Germany.
Email: alexander.spencer@ovgu.de
1303258BPI0010.1177/13691481241303258The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsPancheva et al.
research-article2024
Original Article
Pancheva et al. 271
phrase that went viral during their stand-off (Lince, 2022). What is more, Ukraine has
even made a postal stamp out of this expression (Michael, 2022). Briefly put, the utter-
ance of these words and the resistance of the Ukrainian border guards have turned them
into world-known national heroes.
The article hopes to make three small contributions to political science and International
Relations (IR): First, by importing insights into the conceptualisation of the ‘hero’ from
Heroism Studies into IR. While the ‘hero’ plays an essential role in politics and especially
in questions of legitimation of the state, hierarchies, sacrifice and violence, there has been
very little reflection on what constitutes a ‘hero’ in IR. While the analysis of heroes in IR
has been frequently done eclectically, insights from Heroism Studies hopefully contribute
to a more systematic analysis of the ‘hero’ by providing grounds for focusing on some
characteristic features in the analysis of politics. The second contribution of the article is
empirical as it seeks to investigate how ‘heroes’ are constructed in British media reporting
on the Snake Island incident during the war between Russia and Ukraine by applying a
method of narrative analysis which focuses on setting, characterisation and emplotment
to investigate how British media outlets (The Guardian, The Times and The Sun) con-
struct the Ukrainian ‘hero’. Thereby, it indicates that such storytelling is part of a larger
romantic story of a civilisational battle between good and evil, which draws on many
aspects of mythology and the classical features of a romantic genre. These constitute the
Ukrainian border guards as brave heroes in a romantic struggle for an ideal of freedom
and democracy against a more powerful, unjust enemy. A third contribution of the article
is its indication of the political functions of the ‘hero’ in political discourse beyond the
established notion of strategically generating support for the heroes’ side and the violence
committed in the conflict. Specifically, it calls for more research on the unintended con-
sequences of heroisation in war, which includes the marginalisation of misbehaviour by
the hero as well as the creation of (gendered) hierarchies which constitute the ‘heroic’
behaviour as not ‘normal’ and as something which is reserved for an exceptional few.
In pursuit of these three contributions, the article is structured as follows: The first part
brings insights from Heroism Studies to IR and elaborates on the character and definition
of a ‘hero’, narratives of the ‘hero’, as well as the role of the ‘hero’ in politics. The second
part introduces narrative analysis as a method and elaborates on key features of a roman-
tic narrative and the role of the ‘hero’ in romance. The third part applies a method of nar-
rative analysis which focuses on the elements of setting, characterisation and emplotment
to 11 newspaper articles on the Snake Island incident in The Guardian, The Times and The
Sun. The final part of the article elaborates on the potential implication of the romanti-
cised constitution of the hero in the war on Ukraine for the support of the Ukrainian side
in the conflict, for the marginalisation of misbehaviour by Ukrainian soldiers and the
effects of exceptionalisation of ‘heroic’ behaviour.
The ‘hero’ in heroism studies and IR
Beyond political science, the study of heroes is well established and has developed into
an own research community under the label of ‘Heroism Studies’, which lies at the border
between literary studies and psychology with its own journals (Allison et al., 2023;
Heroism Science: An Interdisciplinary Journal, n.d.) and conferences (Allison et al.,
2023; Bethlehem Tertiary Institute, 2023). While ‘Heroism Studies’, similar to ‘Terrorism
Studies’, is not an own discipline as such but a network of researchers from different
disciplines interested in the same topic, there have been few attempts to bring insights
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