A status of a trickster is often assigned to Russia by experts who emphasize that the persuasive power of this state is generally based on it’s ability to mislead vulnerable audiences abroad.

Adopting an approach that integrates disinformation and constructivist theories the paper will examine dominant Russian disinformation narratives in Austria between 2022 and 2026, with particular attention to their entanglement with symbolic structures rooted in the national identity of this state[1].

Three hypotheses will be verified:

1) Austrian political discourse about Russia refer to Austria's self-image as a small, neutral country and part of the EU.

2) Depending on which of the three mentioned images dominates in individual narratives, issues related to Russia, including the Russian threat, are contextualized differently.

3) Russian disinformation discourses are effective when directed to audiences vulnerable to Austrian postcolonial fears and unprocessed historical traumas (e.g. FPÖ voters).

4) These discourses expose two main vectors of fear: (a) fear of state disintegration as a result of multiethnicity, (b) fear of losing sovereignty to global empires.

[1] Identity is understood here in accordance with Bourdieu's concept of habitus and its definition formulated by Szacki as "the entirety of acquired and consolidated dispositions to perceive, evaluate and respond to the world according to the established schemes in a given environment" on the intellectual, emotional, mental and behavioural level (Szacki 2005).