Discursive construction of national-state identity in the speeches of the President of Russia at the meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club

The article is devoted to the analysis of the discursive construction of national-state identity in the speeches of the President of Russia, V.V. Putin, at the "Valdai" Discussion Club meetings from 2020 to 2022. The relevance of the study is determined by the increasing role of identificatory narratives in the context of geopolitical turbulence, the crisis of previous models of world order, and the intensification of value contradictions between Russia and the collective West. The subject of the research is the official political discourse of the President of Russia, realized within the framework of programmatic speeches at "Valdai"; the focus is on discursive strategies and techniques for constructing national-state identity, as well as their substantive dynamics under the influence of a number of factors (the COVID-19 pandemic, the special military operation). The purpose of the work is to identify and analyze the main discursive strategies and mechanisms for constructing national-state identity in the "Valdai" speeches of the President of Russia. To achieve this goal, the following tasks are addressed: 1) theoretical understanding of the concept of national-state identity and its discursive construction; 2) determining the place of the President's discourse in the system of political communication aimed at constructing identity; 3) characterization of "Valdai" as a unique platform for the formation of identificatory models; 4) substantive analysis of speeches from 2020 to 2022 based on the discursive components identified in the theoretical part of the research. The methodological basis of the study comprises a constructivist approach combined with discourse analysis, allowing for the identification of key components of identificatory discourse (historical narratives, the opposition of "us - them," cultural-territorial images, etc.). The scientific novelty of the work lies in the comprehensive analysis of the evolution of the identificatory model in presidential discourse at "Valdai" during a pivotal period for Russia, as well as in identifying the role of the pandemic and the special military operation as catalysts for the final formation of the "us - them" opposition and the crystallization of the image of Russia as a unique civilization. The author identifies key discursive mechanisms through which a sovereign model of Russian identity is constructed in the context of geopolitical upheaval, positioning Russia as an independent center of power in the emerging multipolar world. The conclusions justify that the "Valdai" speeches of the President serve as a conceptual core of the official Russian identity model, setting the parameters for its further discursive reproduction for both the domestic audience and the international community.