Analysis: Russia’s Influence Tendrils in Western Academia

For centuries, Western understanding of Ukraine has been shaped by the perspective of the Russian Empire and its successors. Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014 led some Western academics and policymakers to reassess long-held assumptions about Ukraine. It also brought greater scrutiny to Western academics who promoted viewpoints preferred by the Kremlin.

Still, Russian influence operations have persisted, attempting to promote narratives that reinforce Russia’s view of the world while diminishing Ukraine’s own. “Things are changing but the focus on Russia, Russian language, literature and culture have been structurally part of Western academia for decades if not centuries and that does not change overnight,” said Serhii Plokhy, a history professor at Harvard University.

Ties between Russia and Western academics run deep. Many professors at leading Western universities studied or worked in Russia as part of their academic careers. Some Ukrainian analysts argue that these relationships also created opportunities for recruitment or financial influence. “Some of whom have maintained ties with Russia since the days of the USSR, may have been recruited by Russian intelligence services, or simply receive financial or other incentives from Moscow,” said Serhii Kuzan, chair of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center.

Russia’s long history of influencing the West

Influencing Western audiences has been a state strategy of Russia’s for decades. In 1984, Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, who had worked for the KGB-linked Novosti Press Agency before defecting to the West, publicly claimed that Moscow devoted far more attention to ideological subversion than traditional espionage. Bezmenov described a long-term process of “demoralization,” followed by destabilization and crisis.

“At its core is reflexive control, which means feeding an adversary curated information so that he arrives, seemingly of his own free will, at a decision Moscow has already scripted for him,” said Douglas Davis, a physician and geopolitical analyst who works extensively with Ukrainian civil society and defense circles. “The Western academic who independently ‘concludes’ that NATO provoked the war is the intended output of that mechanism.”

These Soviet “active measures” included propaganda and information operations targeting Western academics as potential agents of influence. “The Russian propaganda system began developing during the Soviet era and today uses the entire arsenal of methods honed since then to coerce cooperation, ranging from bribery to blackmail and intimidation,” said retired Ukrainian defense intelligence colonel Vitalii Ostapchuk.

Soviet efforts to shape Western perceptions went back much further. During the Holodomor, meaning “death by hunger” in Ukrainian, millions of Ukrainians starved under Soviet policies of forced collectivization and grain confiscation in 1932-33. Walter Duranty, The New York Times’ Moscow correspondent, downplayed and denied the famine, even as journalists such as Gareth Jones reported mass starvation across Ukraine.

Academic journals and publishers can also play a role. A recent VoxUkraine report found nearly 400 cases between 2022 and 2025 where Russian academic publications distributed by Springer Nature identified occupied Ukrainian territories, including Sevastopol, Simferopol and Donetsk, as part of Russia.

“The Kremlin uses all possible tools, including culture and academia, to promote its narratives,” said Ilona Sologub, editor of the Ukrainian analytical outlet VoxUkraine. She added that there is little pressure from the Western academic community to stop cooperating with Russian academics. “Russian scientists are heavily involved in development of technologies for Russian military production, and on the other level, their presence at conferences and other events legitimizes the aggressor,” she said.

Russian academics who continue to publish in Western journals often try to avoid political debate, even when writing about topics related to the war. “Most often they hide behind the ‘science unrelated to politics’ argument,” said Sologub.

Russia’s influence operations are largely directed from the top, although individual agencies have room to operate independently. “In Russia, the system for conducting influence operations is centralized and managed by members of the Russian president’s inner circle,” Ostapchuk said. “At the same time, the FSB and GRU have opportunities for local initiative within the broader system.”

How Russia builds influence in Western academia

Branislav Slantchev, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego, said it is important not to view everything as part of a single conspiracy.

“There are several distinct mechanisms at work here, and it is important not to collapse them into a single conspiracy narrative,” said Slantchev. “Some are more direct, including RT, Sputnik, state-funded conferences and covert financing. Others rely on prestige, access, ideological alignment, and institutional incentives.”

Russia has actively attempted to build institutional ties with Western universities. The Kremlin-backed Russkiy Mir Foundation has established Russian centers at universities and educational institutions around the world. This includes providing grants and support for Russian-language and cultural programs. Participation in these programs does not necessarily mean that academics promote Kremlin narratives, but they provide another way for Moscow to build relationships within foreign academic institutions.

For Western academics studying Russia, access can be important. “Scholars who depend on visas, archives, interviews, and fieldwork access in Russia can become vulnerable to subtle forms of pressure and self-censorship,” said Slantchev.

“Notably, Russia in Global Affairs was co-founded with support from RIA Novosti and has Western academics on its editorial board alongside Sergey Lavrov,” Slantchev added. Western academics have participated in Russian conferences, joined advisory boards, received honorary professorships and maintained access to Russian political elites. These relationships, Slantchev said, can create incentives for academics to reproduce narratives that broadly align with Moscow’s view of the world.

One prominent example is the Valdai Discussion Club, which regularly brings together Russian officials and foreign academics and analysts. Slantchev noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly used the forum to present his worldview to an international audience. Over the years, numerous Western academics have participated.

Among them is John Mearsheimer, a famous international relations professor at the University of Chicago, who has argued that the West bears primary responsibility for Russia’s war in Ukraine. For the past four years, Mearsheimer was on record saying that Ukraine’s defeat was imminent. His 2018 book, “The Great Delusion,” received Valdai’s Best Book of the Year Award in 2019. Slantchev added that Mearsheimer later acknowledged in the preface of his 2023 book, “How States Think,” that his research had been supported by “a small grant from the Valdai Discussion Club” that he received in connection with the award.

“Mearsheimer is quoted frequently as an academic in the mass media even though this is not at all the opinion of those who actually study the region,” said Sarah Ann Oates, a political communications professor at the University of Maryland. “The Kremlin can cherry-pick poorly informed, but influential theorists such as Mearsheimer to push their propaganda narratives,” Ann Oates added. Mearsheimer did not respond to my request for comment.

However, Mearsheimer’s views on Ukraine have not always aligned with those promoted by Moscow. In 1993, he argued that Ukraine should retain a nuclear deterrent, warning that Russia could someday attempt to reconquer the country.

Take the case of Stephen Cohen, the late professor of Russian studies at Princeton and New York University. Cohen argued for years that NATO expansion had provoked Russia and placed much of the responsibility for deteriorating relations with Moscow on the West. Following Russia’s first invasion in 2014, Russian state media frequently featured Cohen on channels such as RT, in addition to Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University.

For Moscow, the value isn’t necessarily in converting academics or high-profile media figures into supporters of Russia, but in using respected Western voices to validate arguments the Kremlin wants circulating abroad.

Such arguments include NATO and the West causing the Russia-Ukraine war, Russia is too powerful for Ukraine to prevail and must therefore give in to Russian demands, among other arguments presented by the Kremlin. Both Cohen and Sachs were active promoters of such arguments.

How Russian narratives gain credibility

The strategy can be especially effective because a Russian narrative carries more credibility in the West when it comes from a professor at a respected university, such as Columbia or Princeton University. Slantchev described this as “credibility transfer.” Russian narratives can move through conferences, academic journals, think tanks and media appearances before reaching Western audiences through people they are more likely to trust.

However, not everyone who promotes arguments favorable to Moscow has a vested interest in Russia or stands to benefit financially. Some simply share parts of the Kremlin’s worldview. “Some Western intellectuals are deeply disillusioned with the West and therefore sympathetic to actors perceived as challenging American or liberal international dominance,” said Slantchev.

But policing this debate is not an option. “There’s no central body policing this in academia, and there shouldn’t be,” said Seva Gunitsky, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. “The problem is academic institutions are poorly equipped to distinguish heterodox-but-legitimate scholarship, versus the laundering of narratives that exploit the conventions of academic freedom,” Gunitsky said.

“Those are very different things, but they look similar from the outside, which is what makes the laundering effective.”