ISSN 2786-6165 (ONLINE) №3(3) 2022 9 СЕРІЯ «ФІЛОЛОГІЯ» UDC 811.111’06 https://doi.org/10.52058/2786-6165-2022-3(3)-9-23 Pavlichenko Larysa Vasylivna Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor at the Department of English Philology and Intercultural Communication, Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Tarasa Shevchenko Blvd, 14, Kyiv, 01601, tel.: (044) 239 3302, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3801-2587 Havryliuk Olha Oleksandrivna Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor at the Department of English Philology and Intercultural Communication, Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Tarasa Shevchenko Blvd, 14, Kyiv, 01601, tel.: (044) 239 3302, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0365-3248 POLITICAL ACTORS IN THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE: CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Abstract. With the beginning of the war in Ukraine started by Russia in 2022, political discourse on the war in Ukraine has dominated the world media. This research explores the properties of British and American media coverage of war-related news. The media rhetoric highlights the new world threat (Putin’s Russia) and appeals to the international community. The study is based on the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) which explore the relations of the language and power as well as relations between language and image. The article analyses the political and ideological contexts of the war in Ukraine and investigates language means used to verbalise discursive strategies. Political actors are researched by a three-level analytical framework for textual analysis which divides the text analysis into three domains: actors, social actions and argumentation. In the study we focus on historical, cultural and psychological contexts and political implicatures. The content analysis of the articles from British and American newspapers and magazines revealed the extensive employment of crime- and punishment-related vocabulary, the