Introduction and Objectives: The Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022 has transformed the European security order. While conventional analyses have focused on geopolitical factors such as NATO's eastward expansion, this article argues that the deeper roots of the war lie in identity and discursive layers. The main objective of this research is to explain the role of the clash between Russian and Ukrainian identity narratives in the outbreak of the 2022 war and to identify the mechanisms through which identity differences escalated into a security crisis and subsequently into full-scale war. The central research question is how the clash between Moscow's and Kyiv's identity narratives after 1991 led to the February 2022 war through specific mechanisms. The research hypothesis posits that the war is the result of a three-link causal chain: Ukraine's identity-building actions in three domains of language, history, and integration with the West (first link); the gradual representation of these actions in Russian discourse from "neighbor" to "existential threat" (second link); and the interpretation of this threat within the ideological framework of the "Russian World," which justified the war as the "only option" (third link).

Methods: This research employs a qualitative approach with a descriptive-analytical method within the constructivist theoretical framework. Data were collected through the examination of official Kremlin documents (speeches by Putin and Lavrov, the article "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians") and Ukrainian language and historical legislation (the 1989 and 2019 language laws, the 2019 constitutional amendments). The data analysis method was process tracing, which enabled the identification of the causal chain among the three hypothesized links. The research sources are divided into three categories: Ukrainian legislation, official Russian documents, and previous research

Results and Discussion: The first link demonstrates that since early independence, Ukraine initiated a coherent identity-building project across three domains: language policy (from symbolic laws of 1989 and 1996 to the mandatory 2019 law), historical policy (from Kuchma's hybrid narrative to the criminalization of Soviet symbols in 2015), and integration with the West (from the 1994 "Partnership for Peace" program to the constitutional enshrinement of NATO and EU membership in 2019). These three domains, in interaction with one another, constructed a Europe-oriented identity independent from Russia. The second link reveals that the representation of these identity-building actions in Russian discourse followed a three-stage pattern: the first period (1991-2013) represented Ukraine as a "disobedient neighbor"; the second period (2014-2021) as a "traitor to brotherly ties"; and the third period (2021-2022) as an "existential threat," "neo-Nazi," and "Trojan horse of America." As this representation approached "existential threat," the cost of militarism for Russia decreased. The third link shows that the representation of "existential threat" alone was insufficient for initiating war; this representation was interpreted within the ideological framework of the "Russian World." Concepts such as "katechon" (restrainer of chaos), "the divided Russian people," and "historical resentment" over the Soviet collapse constructed a semantic network in which war was represented not as an aggressive act but as a "defensive-civilizational duty" and the "only remaining option" against the existential threat of a Western-oriented Ukraine.

Conclusions: The 2022 war is the result of the accumulation and interaction of three causal links: Ukraine's identity-building actions, their gradual representation in Russian discourse, and the justification of war within the "Russian World" framework. What changed was not merely Ukraine's strategic position, but the meaning of this position within Russia's identity narratives. Material threats were transformed into "existential threats" through processes of meaning-making and othering, and this transformation was a necessary condition for the legitimization of full-scale war. These findings underscore the importance of a constructivist perspective in analyzing international conflicts.