The article forms part
of the transnational UKR-HER project on representation of Ukraine’s cultural
and historical heritage in the Global South media. It analyses how leading
Indian Englishlanguage newspapers, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, and The
Telegraph portray Ukraine’s cultural and historical heritage in the wake of the
Russia-Ukraine war. The article advances an innovative framework that
integrates ontological security with media narrative analysis examining how
media narratives both challenge and re-enforce India’s ontological security
position that frames the war as either a European ‘problem’ or a proxy war
between the West and Russia. The article suggests that cultural and historical
heritage can be a profound marker of national agency and has implications for
how the war is communicated to a foreign audience, in particular, the
portrayals of Russia and Ukraine as two parties directly involved in the war,
and the European Union as a key actor in the preservation of Ukraine’s cultural
and historical heritage.