Abstract. The article discusses a controversial issue of Ukrainian identity with a focus on its pro-European component as a factor in shaping consolidated identity and overcoming the “divided” identity. Based on interdisciplinary research on identity, Barthes’ concept of mythologizing, and the approach to fields of memory from a narrative analysis perspective, the article reached the following findings. The narrative framework underlying the origins of pro-European identity among Ukrainians is presented through a schematic narrative template that combines structural elements of “affinity with European principles of state-building,” “Ukrainians’ participation in the development of European history,” and “shared democratic values.” These elements are based on six associated narratives derived from the fields of Ukrainian memory and the contemporary narrative of their “common values” with the democratic world.

Tools for demythologizing the narratives that underlie the divided identity of Ukrainians are schematized in a narrative template of causal connection between “chosen traumas” and “liberation struggle”, which integrates narrative plots, characters, and motifs of their actions into the structural components of Exposition, Complication, Resolution, Evaluation, and Code, and in the sequence of narrative functions: Deception, Villainy, Prohibition, Violation of Prohibition, Beginning of Resistance, Struggle, Persecution, Stigmatization, and Victory. At the linguo-pragmatic level, the consolidation of Ukrainian identity is achieved through strategies of value polarization of “us” versus “them”, discrediting the mythologemes of “kinship” and “care” in their modern rearticulation during the wartime, restoring inverted roles and role players, and positive-re-evaluation of Russian derogatory labels for Ukrainians.