New View on Populism as an Expression of Content and Style of Political Communication

The work is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of populism as a means of political communication in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Subject: populist discourse in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, tools and practices of populists. Purpose: to study the spread of populism as a means of expression and style of political communication of modern political leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine - Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Zelensky. Methodology: the study used the method of discourse analysis of official speeches and political leaders’ comments, as well as media analysis with the construction of a cloud of meanings. Results: as a result, the author identified the populist V. Putin’s, A. Lukashenko’s and V. Zelensky’s rhetoric, revealed the key theses and meanings of their speeches, and determined the preliminary relevance of the hypotheses, and established the limitations of the study. Conclusions: as a result of the theoretical and empirical research, the hypothesis: Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Zelensky in their communication appeal to the simplicity and clarity of the proposed solutions and the priority in solving complex problems with simple, quick and effective solutions was fully confirmed. The second hypothesis about the correlation between management style and populist rhetoric was partially confirmed.