The Russian expert system is poorly equipped to produce independent, Ukraine-specific knowledge. The field has remained institutionally underdeveloped, heavily dependent on state structures, and shaped by a state-centric corporate culture. Russian experts often lack specialised competencies for studying Ukraine.
Many prominent commentators have backgrounds in American studies, international security, or other broad fields rather than Ukrainian affairs. Knowledge of Ukrainian is exceedingly rare, limiting direct engagement with Ukrainian-language scholarship, media, and primary sources. Russian analysis consequently relies heavily on Russian-language information. As a result, it tends to reproduce the Russian information agenda rather than critically engage with Ukraine’s own intellectual and informational environment.
The Russian expert community treats foreign-policy expertise primarily as a service to the state rather than as an independent professional activity. Archival evidence indicates that neo-imperial and revanchist thinking dominated within Russia’s foreign-policy and security establishment from the very earliest days of post-Soviet Russia, targeting Ukraine specifically. Russian experts serviced this line intellectually, dressing it up in the language of analysis and justification. They placed greater weight on loyalty and usefulness to the Kremlin’s agenda than on methodological rigour. This is borne out by the near-total absence of genuine reflection on decades of expert failure on Ukraine.
This report examines how expertise on contemporary Ukraine developed in Russia, what institutional and professional characteristics shaped it, and what role Russian experts play in the production and dissemination of narratives about Ukraine. Its conclusions are supported by evidence from several sources, including archival material, expert directories, dissertation records, bibliometric data from the Web of Science and Scopus, and analysis of Ukraine-related publications and books. Among the study’s key findings is the concept of a neo-imperial discursive matrix, an analytical tool for tracing how a persistent set of narratives about Ukraine has radicalised across different stages of Russia’s post-Soviet history.
Knowledge about Ukraine produced in Russia is systematically ideologised, which is evident across different forms of scholarly output, namely academic journal articles, dissertations and books. The Russian book market likewise shows a persistent presence of openly propagandistic and pseudo-historical titles, with ‘Z-literature’ emerging as a distinct subgenre after 2022. At the same time, Russian authors remain marginally involved in the global production of knowledge on Ukraine.
Russian experts generally do not appear to play any role in strategic foreign-policy decision-making. Rather, their primary task is to interpret, legitimise, and operationalise a course set by the Kremlin. Across decades, expert debate has revolved not around whether Ukraine should be drawn back into Moscow’s orbit of influence, but how to do so most effectively. The solutions they proposed fall into three main approaches: revanchist neo-imperialism, pragmatic neo-imperialism, and a Yalta-style bargain with the west. Disagreements between proponents of these tactical approaches are persistent, and western observers frequently mistake them for a strategic split, or even dissent from the Kremlin’s line.
Institutionally, Russian expertise has been structured around three Ukraine-related functions: (1) to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty through information warfare and political interference; (2) to reshape western public debate in ways favourable to the Kremlin, among other means, exploiting the very platforms western universities provide them, and learning from Hamas’s messaging tactics; and (3) to legitimise Russia’s policy towards Ukraine for domestic audiences. Although some organisations tend to specialise in a particular form of influence, these functions largely overlap.
Taken together, these findings show that the Russian expert milieu on Ukraine functions, in effect, as a factory of state propaganda and disinformation. Hence, engagement with the Russian expert community creates specific risks for western institutions. These include mistaking rhetorical distance for moderation, giving Russian narratives institutional legitimacy, lending academic authority to unqualified voices, overlooking propaganda cloaked as legitimate scholarship, and allowing perceived insider access to distort expert assessment.
For western institutions engaging with Russian international-relations experts, the report recommends:
- presume institutional affiliation with the Russian state unless meaningful autonomy can be demonstrated;
- assess the substance of experts’ positions rather than their rhetorical distance from the Kremlin;
- treat claims of insider access with extreme caution;
- verify actual subject-specific expertise and publication records;
- strengthen methodological scrutiny of ostensibly academic material.
The views and opinions contained in this report are those of its authors only and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the International Centre for Defence and Security or any other organisation.