European energy resilience in the face of the Russo-Ukrainian war: Discursive constructions of resilience and implications for sustainability transitions

This study examines how energy resilience was discursively constructed in EU media debates during the energy crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and explores the implications of these constructions for Europe's sustainable energy transition. Existing research has primarily focused on energy security concerns, policy shifts and changing transition priorities following the Russo-Ukrainian war. Building on this literature, we adopt a constructivist and discourse-theoretical perspective on resilience to examine how crises shape transition governance through competing interpretations of vulnerabilities, risks and appropriate system responses across different temporal horizons. Drawing on EU media coverage from the first three years of the crisis, the analysis identifies several interpretations of energy resilience: Resilience as immediate systemic adaptation with a promise of future transformation; resilience as systemic resistance reinforcing the status quo; and technology-focused sub-narratives, problematizing the resilience of nuclear and renewable energy systems. Among these, resilience-as-adaptation emerged as the dominant framing, largely shaped by EU-level policy actors. We further show that vulnerability and risk framings play a critical role in legitimising particular crisis response strategies and transition pathways. While narrow framings tend to justify resilience in terms of incremental adaptation, broader framings support calls for transformation. Finally, regime actors frequently articulate resilience in temporal terms, emphasising short- to medium-term adaptation while deferring structural transformation to the long term. Overall, the findings contribute to resilience debates by demonstrating how temporal framings of crisis and transformation shape which transition pathways and governance responses become politically legitimate during geopolitical crises.