The presence of war has been considered one of the main contextual factors leading to rapid changes in media discourse. During periods of conflict, the media is characterized by an increased emphasis on a clear division between “us” – the good guys and “them” – the bad guys (Bugarski 1997). In particular, a “polarizing logic of war discourse” (Pankov, Mihelj, and Bajt 2011, p. 1044) is deliberately formed by conflating various forms of nationalism and other identity discourses, such as gender and age (ibid), with the aim of creating binaries and contrasting the different entities involved in the war. In doing so, media serve to maintain power in political systems, as they promote the privileged social relationships and values ​​of the ruling political structure (Van Dijk 2006, p. 15). Media representations of the political crisis in Crimea in 2014 followed this pattern. In this case study, using critical discourse analysis, I will examine the language and accompanying video of the article "'What if my son doesn't come back at all': Crimean mothers wait for their sons be written in Ukraine,” which was published on the Russia Today News website on March 26, 2014. I pay particular attention to how these textual and visual elements transform people into nationalized and gendered subjects in a pro-nationalist narrative. -Russian in order to legitimize the ideology that the information serves. linked to concern over the situation of Crimean soldiers serving in the Ukrainian army after the referendum on the legal status of Crimea held on March 16, 2014. Following this referendum and a series of events that he led, Crimea, once an autonomous republic within Ukraine, became part of the Russian Federation, and those soldiers who did not have...... middle of paper .... ...d nationalism. Journal of Political Ideologies, 3 (1), p.99-118.Flood, G., C., 2002. Political myth. New York: Routledge. Habermas, J., 1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere: an investigation of a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Hall, S., 1988, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Hard Left. London: Verso. Pankov, M., Mihelj, S. and Bajt, V., 2011. Nationalism, gender and multivocality of war discourse in television news, Media Culture Society, 33 (7), p.1043-1059.Slier, P ., 2014. “What if my son doesn’t come back at all”: Crimean mothers wait for their sons to be drafted into Ukraine. Russia today. [online] Available at: http://rt.com/news/crimea-mothers-soldiers-ukraine-389/ [Accessed April 30, 2014] Van Dijk, TA, 2006, Discourse and manipulation. Discourse and society, 17(3), p..356–383.