Executive Summary

• Russian higher education is increasingly characterized by the systematic repression of state-critical voices, erosion of academic integrity, political indoctrination, and militarization. These trends are constricting the space for education that is oriented toward future societal needs, democratic governance, and active citizenship.
• In response to state persecution prior to and particularly after the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, antiwar Russian academics have established their own higher education projects (HEPs). These initiatives provide a channel for nonideological education, especially in the social and political sciences. Independent Russian HEPs help preserve the academic networks that would be essential to any post-authoritarian Russian recovery.
• The scale of student enrollment across the newly established HEPs in exile is broadly comparable to the combined graduate output of Russia’s leading pre-2022 private universities and liberal arts programs, such as the European University at St. Petersburg (EUSP), the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES or Shaninka), and Smolny College.
• Exiled Russian HEPs pursue four core functions: (1) fostering unconstrained critical thinking, (2) providing first-response emotional support and safe spaces for antiwar participants, (3) enabling community-building efforts, and (4) creating pathways into the academic systems of foreign democracies.
• These HEPs face mounting challenges, including political pressure from the Russian government, financial precarity, short planning horizons, security risks for staff and students, and technological barriers linked to tightening internet restrictions and online censorship. Their resilience will be crucial for sustaining academic outreach to prodemocracy and antiwar audiences.

Introduction

Higher education institutions have historically served as incubators of critical thinking, civic engagement, and democratic values. Russian higher education is no exception. Although academic freedom and institutional autonomy have been gradually eroded with the consolidation of the authoritarian regime, many Russian universities remained among the last institutional spaces where independent inquiry and exposure to plural perspectives could be sustained.

Academics became one of the few professional groups to collectively organize protests against the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The protests took a variety of forms, including petitions and street pickets. Equally significant was the large-scale exodus of Russian academics from the country. Many of those who left went on to launch educational initiatives in exile, bringing together scores of displaced faculty members and becoming new centers of independent learning. These initiatives include Svobodny Universitet (Free University), the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (FLAS), the Smolny-Bard program, and others. Together, they constitute a visible and substantial landscape of independent academic life in exile. It is comparable in scale to the clusters of intellectual activity that had previously thrived around leading private universities in Russia, such as Shaninka, the EUSP, and Smolny College, as well as the prominent state research university, the Higher School of Economics (HSE), all of which are based in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

This report examines Russian educational projects established by scholars and activists who left the country prior to and after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It explores the objectives of these exiled initiatives, the audiences they address, and the types of impact they seek to achieve. It also identifies their most effective strategies, as well as the main constraints they face.

In this report, we differentiate the following types of Russian post-2022 HEPs in exile: (1) HEPs as such, (2) research centers (RCs), and (3) civic education initiatives (CEIs) aimed at fostering dialogue among various groups involved in Russian activism and education in exile. At the same time, these categories are not mutually exclusive, and their functions often overlap in practice. The scope of the report is limited to educational initiatives for adults and does not include projects designed for children in Russia or in Russian-speaking diaspora populations.

The report is organized into five parts.

First, it outlines the political landscape of higher education in Russia, which has become far more repressive since 2022. The report explains the rationale behind the emergence of exiled educational initiatives and how hybrid education has become a practical and necessary response by independent academics to a consolidated authoritarian system.

Second, the report examines the organizational forms of exiled projects and their main objectives in engaging students and peers both inside and outside the country. Third, it analyzes the challenges that arise from the chosen strategies, including those that limit the intended impact. Fourth, it identifies the key obstacles for educational initiatives operating in exile. Fifth, it discusses donors’ priorities in relation to this emerging group of grantees and their vision for educational goals.

The analysis draws on 24 interviews conducted in 2025–26 with representatives of the three HEP types identified above, as well as with international donors.¹

HEPs in exile are not a new phenomenon. Periods of democratic decline have given rise to comparable initiatives in the past, such as “Off-University” from Turkey and the Belarusian-Lithuanian European Humanities University (EHU). Yet Russian HEPs are shaped by a distinct set of conditions, including a specific geopolitical context, the scale and intensity of repression in Russia, and the need for continuous innovation to sustain societal impact. They are directly affected by the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine, as opposition to the war has compelled many of their members to leave the country.

Russian HEPs thus reflect a broader reality in which intensified repression coexists with creative educational innovation as a form of resistance. They demonstrate measurable financial and operational resilience, despite the international funding crisis triggered by the 2025 dismantling of the US Agency for International Development. They have also adapted to repression in the form of discriminatory designations by the Russian government and have implemented functional security protocols for learners operating under conditions of digital surveillance. Some HEPs have evolved into more institutionalized organizations and are gradually moving toward integration into the higher education systems of foreign democracies. Thanks to such evolution and adaptations, the projects command a sustained demand from audiences in Russia, underscoring their continued impact. Taken together, these developments constitute a new chapter of democratic resilience in response to the onslaught of a more technologically advanced and politically extreme authoritarian regime.

The Wartime Transformation of Russian Higher Education

Since 1991, Russian higher education has moved from a period of attempted modernization and internationalization to the systematic repression of state-critical voices and increasing control of academic institutions by Vladimir Putin’s regime. In 2026, Russia was set to fully withdraw from the Bologna Process, in which the country had participated since 2003.² As the data below demonstrate, Russian higher education currently operates under a qualitatively different set of circumstances from those of the past, affecting academic integrity, university autonomy, and the reach of censorship and self-censorship.

Russia’s performance on the Academic Freedom Index (Figure 1) produced by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project reflects a dramatic deterioration over time, from high scores in the 1990s and gradual erosion in the 2000s to a sharp decline since Putin’s third presidential term in 2012 and the post–February 2022 crackdown. By 2024, the scores were approaching the minimum possible values.³

Figure 1. Russia on the Academic Freedom Index, 1990–2025

Although the state’s attacks on liberal-minded activists, academics, and universities in Russia began well before February 2022, particularly with the enactment of the “foreign agents” and “undesirable organizations” laws in 2012 and 2015, it was the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that triggered an unprecedented wave of repression against these targets.

The Russian human rights watchdog OVD-Info has reported the increasing number of academics and educational entities that have been designated as “foreign agents” or “undesirable” in 2021-2025. Those labeled “foreign agents” increased from 4 to 91, and those classified as “undesirable organizations” rose from 5 to 53.⁴

OVD-Info data clearly show that since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russian students have become a priority focus of government scrutiny. Chart 2 illustrates the rise in cases of students being forced to take part in state-backed political events.

Figure 2. Incidents of Persecution at Russian Universities, 2022–24.⁵

Since 2022, OVD-Info has recorded at least 220 cases of political persecution of lecturers and schoolteachers, though experts believe the actual figures may be considerably higher.⁶ Data on criminal cases opened against students and academic staff show a sharp spike in 2022 and 2023 to nearly double the annual figure recorded before the full-scale invasion (Chart the low number for 2025 is due to the cited research ending in Spring 2025).

Figure 3. Criminal Cases Against Russian Students and University Teaching Staff, 2012–25.⁷

In protest of the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine and its authoritarian policies, many scholars have fled the country. Their exact number remains uncertain, with estimates ranging from 2,500 to 12,000.⁸⁹ These departures have had a major impact on Russian academia. The levels of intellectual debate and the diversity of views have plummeted to historically unprecedented lows. Research on topics that the government considers sensitive has become impossible. Similarly, public expertise has become pliant and biased, making it an unreliable source of knowledge.

Against the backdrop of intensifying repression, Russian higher education institutions, including those that once represented the liberal academy, are being actively harnessed for the state’s war objectives. In the first month following the full-scale invasion, in March 2022, the rectors of 184 prominent Russian universities formally expressed their support for the “special military operation.”¹⁰ Acting on orders from the Kremlin, the universities subsequently revised their post-2022 curriculums to include two compulsory courses— “The Foundations of Russian Statehood” and “History of Russia” —that were designed less to educate than to indoctrinate.¹¹

The government’s elevated interest in patriotic education is further reflected in the allocation of university and public research funding. Already in 2023, nearly 70 percent of grant applications approved by the Russian Science Foundation referenced patriotism in some form. Some of the allocations supported projects aimed at the “transition of power” in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territories.¹²

The growing militarization of Russian higher education is made visible by the expansion of military training centers at Russian universities. Between 2022 and 2026, the number of such centers increased by 36, rising from 114 to 150.¹³ The facilities provide basic military training to male students, leaving them with the status of a reserve officer or enlisted serviceman upon graduation. Although attendance remains nominally voluntary at some institutions, consistent reports since 2022 have indicated mounting pressure on students to enroll. In early 2026, Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov said universities would be tasked with ensuring that at least 2 percent of students sign contracts with the Ministry of Defence.¹⁴

According to Faridaily, documents prepared by the Ministry of Defence for internal use, and inadvertently published on the websites of several colleges, indicate that Russian authorities plan to recruit 78,800 personnel into the military’s Unmanned Systems Forces (VBS) this year, including through student enlistment.¹⁵

The Russian student dissident media outlet Groza has identified at least 182 universities and 64 colleges in Russia that are actively promoting contract service in the VBS among their students. Recruitment efforts have also been identified in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, including at 8 universities in Crimea and 15 universities in the occupied portions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia.¹⁶

What Is the Purpose of Exiled Educational Initiatives?

In this context of intensified repression and militarization, professors who were committed to the values of free teaching and research sought to launch educational projects that would allow people residing in Russia—young people in particular, who remain mostly Western-oriented—to engage in independent learning and critical thinking. Under Russia’s authoritarian regime, the expression of such values amounts to dissent, support for democracy, and denunciation of the war.

Three years is a short time for the maturation of an educational project, but some Russian HEPs in exile have undergone a remarkable evolution. They emerged from the networks of displaced scholars to become cohesive teams and even institutions. Drawing on existing research on exiled education, this report distinguishes between different types of HEPs based on their method and language of teaching; relations with the national education system in host countries, including academic accreditation; and the type of financial support they receive.¹⁷

We have examined seven distinct HEPs. Four of them operate online, while three offer in-person instruction. In five HEPs, the primary language of instruction is Russian; in the remaining two, it is English. English instruction occurs in one online and one in-person HEP.

Two online and two “in-person” HEPs charge tuition fees for the entire programs: three of these four offer full scholarships. The remaining three HEPs of the seven studied charge fees for individual courses. Three HEPs receive accreditation either from the host country in the case of exiled HEPs, or from an international body. Online HEPs enroll the largest number of students overall, as well as the largest number of students from Russia (Figure 4).¹⁸

Figure 4. Russian Higher Education Projects in Exile, 2025–26.

From the outset, all HEPs faced choices about how institutionalized and embedded they would aim to be in exile, and whether they would prioritize engaging people in host countries or the audiences that remained in Russia. These two alternative strategies proved to be mutually exclusive, affecting the decision to institutionalize.

The least institutionalized HEPs, in the sense of formal establishment in the host country, tend to attract the highest proportion of students who reside in Russia. A striking example is Svobodny Universitet, which brings together up to 300 instructors from around the world and has “graduated” approximately 20,600 students over the past five years.

Despite Moscow’s decision to designate it as an “undesirable organization,” the number of enrolled students at Svobodny Universitet fell by only 10–12% in the year following the designation. The move thus had no significant impact on the university’s ability to engage with Russian audiences. This project is rather unique in terms of both the number of students overall and the number of students who join from Russia. Yet other online HEPs also report a sizable share of students based in Russia, at the level of approximately 40–45%. Notably, the fact that these HEPs cannot offer formal degrees does not affect their ability to attract participants from Russia.

Considerations of potential impact are further complicated by the circumstances in which the exiled HEPs were launched. In response to the regime’s crackdown on academic freedom and large-scale displacement, the initiatives were driven to reconstruct the broken horizontal ties in the academic community.

As a result, the impact of the exiled HEPs could be viewed through the lens of their four key functions:

• Providing collective emotional support
• Facilitating unconstrained critical thinking
• Building communities among academic audiences, including students, across borders
• Ensuring integration into Western academic systems

In the immediate aftermath of the Russian regime’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, both online and in-person Russian HEPs in exile provided a collective emotional support role. The state’s crackdown on protest, the adoption of censorship laws, and abrupt decisions to emigrate left many professors and students stranded, powerless vis-à-vis the regime, and socially isolated. The HEPs stepped in and offered “spaces of normalcy” for their audiences, ensuring that the war and domestic political developments could be discussed without fear of punishment.

Yet in 2023, this function started to give way to educational content. Instead of commentary on the war and persecutions (in which participation could put students joining from Russia at risk) the focus shifted to a more academic discussion of various subjects, including those related to the war and the functioning of the authoritarian regime.

As one representative of an online HEP (HEP5) observed: “We don’t discuss ways to overthrow the Russian government at our school. Instead, we discuss politics in general.”

This evolution in emphasis – and, by extension, self-understanding – is what marked the shift in rationale toward more long-term and substantive impact. Organizers recognized that their initiatives could become vehicles for maintaining unconstrained discussion and nurturing critical thinking in the Russian language, facilitated by people who had firsthand experience with authoritarian repression. Such a service is crucial in light of the ideology-laden teaching and highly cryptic discussions that prevail in university classrooms inside Russia.

To earn a broader appeal among Russian-speaking students, the subject matter was bound to switch from activist topics to more practical learning and knowledge transmission. Students who join the HEPs are seeking tools that could help them navigate the existing regime or grow professionally in their fields.

The community-building function is another valuable service that the HEPs can provide in an authoritarian system that thrives on social atomization, particularly among critically minded citizens. The new virtual HEPs have become a sort of connective tissue for academic circles that are scattered across Russia and the world, granting them opportunities to discuss their research and teaching and to expose their work to open scrutiny in the world of “free knowledge.”

The operating conditions of these HEPs differ considerably, particularly in terms of the security risks faced by participants inside Russia compared with those abroad. In some cases, they opt to preserve open discussion through stricter security protocols and even degrees of anonymity. Communication becomes less formal, taking place on social media platforms and closed channels among faculty. The payoff for such an adaptation is the ability to attract hundreds of students to a single project of this type (HEP2). However, only less institutionalized, network-like HEPs have the flexibility to take this approach.

Finally, by integrating with host countries’ academic systems, HEPs can become intermediaries for Russian students who plan to pursue education and career opportunities outside of their home country. Their teaching style helps students adapt to international academic practices. These HEPs can also provide educational certificates, and their faculty members can offer informal mentorship and write recommendation letters.

Given their limited access to exchange programs and Western institutions more broadly, Russian students are often deprived of the means to bolster their portfolios and credentials should they choose to apply to foreign universities. Some of the new HEPs have thus become mediators of the outward movement of students from Russia.

Since such movement requires formal certification and authentication, it can only be facilitated by the most institutionalized HEPs in exile, whether they operate online or in person (HEP6, HEP7).

The functions that an HEP chooses to prioritize naturally come with a particular set of tradeoffs. For example, the choice to offer a formal degree or an educational certificate is likely to entail greater institutional formalization and rigidity, and closer ties to the host country’s academic system. More fundamentally, it would assist the outflow of students from Russia. This type of impact would remain modest as well, since only a few students join such projects, and the initiatives would need to compete with normal foreign universities based in democratic countries.

The alternative choice to continue making an impact inside the home country is likely to involve less formalization, more limited opportunities for degree provision, stricter security protocols, and greater anonymity in teaching. This approach does not require institutionalization in host societies. The benefits include the ability to mobilize a large network of displaced professors and to recruit a far greater number of students than the more institutionalized initiatives.

Shaping Impact: Strategic Choices and Their Consequences

As with many other immigrant communities, Russian exiles face the challenge of negotiating the balance of commitments to their home and host societies. There is no such thing as the “right” balance, but the challenge itself means that educational programming on offer in the host society may not be of interest to those concerned with life under an oppressive regime. Students in or focused on Russia would be thirsty for ideas and solutions that would help bring about reform, while those focused on the wider world would be driven by a fundamentally different set of priorities.

In the context of Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the solidarity of Russian exiles with Ukrainians, educational initiatives led by Russian academics operate under much greater political and moral constraints than those run by exiles from other authoritarian states. Every choice about programmatic format, institutionalization or informal convening, or teaching subjects and fields inevitably involves weighing specific kinds of goals and political costs against others.

One of the basic choices that the HEPs had to make is whether they should attempt to institutionalize by recreating their oftentimes elite academic institutions in the new setting. This choice was driven by several considerations, including the need for jobs and immigration status among displaced professors and the pressure to compete for students by offering recognized diplomas.

An opportunity to run a formally established educational program in exile is one of the safest ways to maintain unconstrained discussion in the classroom and to offer students career prospects that would not be limited to Russia alone. At the same time, anchoring a project in the new host country requires steps toward local integration, including the recruitment of local faculty members and enrollment in local organizations and professional associations. Furthermore, such a choice significantly reduces the initiative’s access to a broader audience that could participate virtually from the home society.

Institutionalization in host societies and the problem of impact

Most of our experts noted the challenges of launching formally instituted educational programs in the new national settings. One of the main problems is lack of trust.

Local authorities sometimes refuse to register these initiatives, citing security concerns associated with their country of origin. Our experts mentioned difficulties registering their educational projects in several European countries, where the initiatives were rejected as untrustworthy, despite the organizers’ dissident status in Russia and years of educational collaboration with local universities (HEP6).

For their part, the representatives of these initiatives reported a lack of trust in fair and consistent implementation of host countries’ regulations. In their view, more transparent rules governing the Russian academic community and educational initiatives in exile would make life easier for everyone involved. As one of them observed:

We want this policy to be at least transparent. So that it is clear what we must not do, or that there is a red light, or there is ‘no entry’… but nowhere does a policy actually say that Russian citizens aren’t welcome. What we have in reality is that we prepare required documents, go through an interview, and we’re even told everything looks fine. And then we hear: “Oh, you know, you’re a Russian citizen” (CEI1).

Those initiatives that were more successful in institutionalizing, such as FLAS or the Master of Arts program in Russian studies at Charles University, struggle with other bureaucratic challenges. For example, receiving students from Russia, who would like to access the free academic environment created by the exiled Russian initiatives, can become a challenge due to immigration regulations. Students from Russia who were admitted to the Charles University master’s program experienced difficulties obtaining student visas from the government of the Czech Republic.¹⁹

The choices these initiatives make regarding the exact shape of their institutionalization (for example, an in-person, degree-issuing program), their institutional culture, and their area of focus reflect the impact that they hope to make.

The first and central dilemma for most HEPs is whether institutionalization, with its ensuing obligations to integrate locally, is desirable at all. Such a path prioritizes students who have the means to leave Russia. It is also influenced by local educational rules. Conversely, a decision not to institutionalize provides more opportunities to engage with students in Russia. Individual initiatives are taking different paths, and there is currently no consensus on this issue in the community.

Second, many displaced scholars represent a distinct academic culture of free discussion and high-quality instruction. This culture developed in prestigious Russian universities, both private, like Shaninka and the EUSP, and public, like the HSE.

In exile, former professors from these institutions tend to reproduce their culture and continue to identify with their original ethos. HEPs attempt to preserve traditions and the “guild spirit” of the projects previously built in Russia. As one expert put it: “We deliberately use the brand [of their university]. When we created our school, our former university opposed it … but we used it anyway” (HEP2).

Third, the issue of institutional identification is further complicated by the country-focused research expertise among the members of these initiatives. Together, the latter two factors contribute to identity and integration dilemmas that cannot be resolved without consequences for the project’s potential impact.

The exiled academic community is divided over specific strategies. One group is convinced that the exiles cannot remain in their bubbles and stresses the necessity of collaborating with local communities. This position is reflected in the example of one of our experts. His research center received a grant to support Russian scholars in exile. In his opinion, this fact does not turn the center into “a center for Russian studies.” In his view, the center should adapt its agenda to the host country and participate in broader analytical debates (RC 1). Others are even more ambitious in attempting to make the Russian exiles contributors to the global discussion of democratic norms and politics.

Another group of scholars sees benefits in “moderate intellectual ghettoization” within the academic culture of the host society. As one expert pointed out:

There are different kinds of integration. Consider the example of the Russian Scientific Institute in Berlin [1926–43]: it began with oaths of hatred toward the Bolsheviks and ended as a part of the Nazis’ Ministry of Propaganda because it decided it needed to respect the local context as much as possible. We do not believe in fully integrating into the local agenda of the host country (HEP5).

Overall, integration implies greater involvement by local faculty in the work of the HEPs and research centers, the expansion of expertise beyond the country of origin, adaptation to local government regulations, and prioritizing English as the language of instruction. The implication is that the HEPs will become less exclusively exiled, less oriented toward a future change in the home society, and more normalized as research or educational projects in the global academic community.

HEP members recognize that a push for integration may prove problematic, noting that they are perceived by the local academic community as “temporary ‘relocatees’ and unwelcome competitors” (RC2). The choice in favor of local integration is constrained by competition with existing universities, including for their resources and the prestige of their diplomas, and by the mismatch in teaching and research qualifications. As a result, the HEPs’ offerings may be less attractive, and their impact may be limited in both host and home societies.

By contrast, projects that pursue a strategy of preserving stronger identification with their own tradition and country expertise, as well as keeping Russian as the language of instruction, are effectively focused on ensuring that Russia’s internationalized academic culture survives outside its borders until conditions allow for its return.

This strategy aims to make an impact by providing access to nonideological education in the Russian language and with a Russian democratic context. Its mission is to maintain a cutting-edge and country-focused intellectual agenda that could help to revive domestic Russian academia in the future. The main challenge for this strategy is its less certain financial sustainability.

Exogenous Challenges and Constraints

In addition to the challenges associated with the identification dilemma, the HEPs and research initiatives face a series of constraints stemming from their “exiled” status. The Russian authoritarian regime was quick to identify exiled Russian academics as a serious threat, designating individual professors and entire educational projects as “foreign agents” or “undesirable organizations.”

Political constraints in the form of state persecutions are one of the main objective factors in the strategies of exiled HEPs. On the one hand, an organization’s designation as “undesirable” did not cause a significant decline in its Russian audience. On the other hand, those without such a designation have tried to avoid it out of concern for the safety of their Russian audience and their own staff, as any engagement with a designated group can draw criminal prosecution in Russia. Attempts to avoid designation have translated into what experts identified as HEPs’ often depoliticized public agendas (RC1, RC2).

Security challenges are the consequence of political persecution and stringent wartime censorship laws in Russia. As with Russian human rights organizations (see the first report), HEPs have made developing robust safety protocols a high priority. They apply to class delivery and student recruitment, with the aim of minimizing risk to good-faith participants and guarding against potential provocations by Russian authorities.

Technological constraints are also unavoidable when operating in this environment. Russian participants must have secure internet access to interact safely with virtual HEPs. As Russian authorities intensify their online censorship efforts and directly target anonymization tools like virtual private networks (VPNs) and encrypted messaging applications, the need to develop reliable methods for circumventing state information controls represents one of the most urgent and consequential challenges facing exiled HEPs today.

Financial constraints are another key obstacle that derives from the nature of these ad hoc initiatives. Although HEPs have adopted a range of survival strategies, from heavy reliance on grant funding (covering both large and small projects) to charging tuition fees, all experts reported significant financial difficulties that effectively prevent any long-term planning. The average planning horizon among the surveyed HEPs in exile is just one to two years.

Faculty members remain in an extremely precarious situation, having left Russia in protest and without a sustainable financial plan. Only a few have found stable academic positions, while most still struggle to obtain fellowships or are even forced to change their profession. All of the factors above effectively erode human capital and further disrupt HEPs’ planning efforts.

Financial precarity is exacerbated by the fact that the main US and European donors have themselves been designated as “undesirable organizations” by the Russian government. This creates an extra risk for faculty who join exiled HEPs from Russia, have relatives in Russia, or have a less stable immigration status in the host country.

Donor Support for the Educational Initiatives

Most exiled Russian educational and research initiatives depend on support from donors and host-country institutions. Yet the ecosystem of HEPs and CEIs is marked by a certain discrepancy between the long-term goals of donors and the immediate needs of exiled initiatives. While the latter are often focused on survival, the former are driven by a “future-oriented” paradigm, anticipating the return of academic initiatives to Russia “when the time comes.”²⁰

In fact, the core assumption held by many donors is that their work constitutes a strategic investment in a future democratic Russia. However, the exiled HEPs are primarily concerned with their durable reconstitution outside the country, as any return home is not a realistic prospect in the near term. This leads to a gap between the practical expectations of donors, who prioritize funding for projects that target Russian audiences, and those of exiled academics, who may be occupied with covering monthly bills or the task of establishing themselves professionally outside Russia.

Donors navigate this terrain with varying strategies. For example, US donors maintain the classic return-oriented mandate, stating that their objective in the broadest terms is support for democratic change in Russia through the preservation of democratic activity, a democratic mindset, and democratic networks inside the country (DON3, DON5). They view education in exile as a means to preserve “spaces for free thought” that could benefit Russian society in the future (DON3). Non-US donors similarly operate with the “exile consciousness” framework, stressing the need to work out policy toward Russia for the period after the war concludes (DON1).

Donors’ support for Russian HEPs and CEIs in exile generally falls within one of two main categories:

• Small grants dedicated to emergency assistance. Under this approach, modest sums are allocated to support educational initiatives, research projects, or limited “emergency aid” efforts (DON5).
• Survivability and co-funding. Because a project’s “survivability” is a crucial criterion for funding, an applicant that already receives co-funding from various sources is seen as a more promising prospect, effectively asking the donor to provide “a fishing rod, rather than a fish” (DON2).

With respect to the specificity of educational initiatives, some donors have developed a more nuanced approach to funding. As one of them suggested, the measurable outcomes could be less important than the underlying values embedded in the project (DON2). In her words:

“We take the view that when people find a way to do something—something important, something that serves a broader public good—we look at these projects and try to help.

We approach this question quite pragmatically. We do not expect people to bring about regime change, nor do we require that they land in prison as a result of their activities, thereby somehow undermining or altering the regime. That would simply be unrealistic. I would say that our support rests on two considerations. First, we want to see that people who have the opportunity, who are motivated by some form of publicly beneficial activity, are able to continue that work. And second, we assess that the effect of this work—that is, the benefit to society, or certain segments of it—is real (DON2).”

These donors affirm their commitment to the long-term goal of democratic transformation, while remaining clear-eyed about the obstacles of the present moment. One donor described their approach as operating within a five-year window, recognizing that political change could either happen suddenly or require consistent effort over time (DON4). For some donors, the main goal with respect to Russian education and activist initiatives in exile is to support the small group of dedicated individuals and maintain modest forms of democratic community life while hoping for a future opportunity, a possible “thaw,” within Russia.

Conclusion and Recommendations

What sets Russian HEPs in exile apart from similar initiatives from other countries is the nature of the regime they chose to resist. With the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s regime has evolved into a qualitatively different system, one that is aggressively militarist as well as brutal in its response to any form of domestic dissent or disloyalty.

Resisting this regime requires rethinking the existing approaches to the defense of democratic institutions and values, including in the higher education sector. As the Kremlin consistently works to eliminate sources of independent knowledge and injects propaganda into all levels of education, the operation of educational initiatives based on democratic principles of free research and teaching is essential to the survival of a civic mindset in Russia, particularly among the younger generations.

Preserving independent educational initiatives outside of Russia is also critical to maintaining human capital that could revitalize the academic culture inside the country in any scenario of post-authoritarian transition. These external intellectual bases could also provide a platform to amplify critical voices inside the country and serve as a refuge or an exit option for those who take a principled stance in the domestic debate.

However, it is far from certain that Russian HEPs in exile will remain sufficiently resilient to perform such services. Many participating Russian scholars and educators have found themselves in situations of acute precarity, living in exile or remaining in Russia under conditions of fear and repression. Similarly, the projects cannot engage in long-term planning due to unstable finances and bureaucratic hurdles in the host countries.

The circumstances call for fresh approaches to ensure that civic educational resistance can succeed. The key vulnerabilities of these projects are in the intertwined domains of financial feasibility and security. New solutions to the problem of financing should take into account the fundamental conflict between transparency-based norms governing grantor-grantee relationships in democracies and the realities of the authoritarian regime in Russia, where the exposure of such relationships is likely to trigger domestic and transnational repression.

On the security front, digital privacy and global internet access have recently surfaced as major challenges for anyone living in Russia due to enhanced restrictions and blocking by the regime. Russian filtering and throttling efforts, online censorship, and extensive surveillance are now reshaping routine internet use. Supporting Russian online HEPs will therefore require investment in robust security protocols and novel methods to provide safe access.

Recommendations

• Provide flexible multiyear core funding with emergency reserves. Donors should replace short-term project grants, which usually last from several months to two years, with long-term institutional support at three- to five-year increments, and establish rapid disbursement mechanisms to prevent operational collapse during funding interruptions like those experienced in early 2025.
• Support virtual educational initiatives in recognition of their proven impact. Given the demonstrated demand for independent education in Russia, donors and other stakeholders should support the initiatives that are most capable of bringing students into a virtual classroom and assisting in-class communication. Donors should fund innovative formats and original educational programs that could draw in new audiences and compete with world-class learning projects.
• Invest in digital security infrastructure. Donors should support digital innovation in virtual education, aiming in particular to develop encrypted learning platforms and low-profile technologies that would help exiled HEPs navigate surveillance, visa hurdles, and reputational attacks.
• Facilitate cooperation with trusted intermediary organizations. Donors that have been targeted by the Russian government with discriminatory designations should consider channeling their support to HEPs through trusted intermediary organizations, which could serve as redistribution hubs for education funding and mitigate the risk of political persecution for faculty members and students who remain in Russia.
• Accelerate integration into democracies’ higher education networks. Host governments and accreditation bodies should develop fast-track recognition procedures for exiled Russian HEPs, facilitate partnerships with established universities, and support joint degrees and credit transfer arrangements.

Methodology

Our data is predominantly drawn from 24 anonymized interviews with experts from the sector (7 interviews with HEPs, 4 interviews with RCs, 7 interviews with CEIs) and its principal donors (6 interviews). The interviews were conducted between February 2024 and February 2026. The research also relies on participant observation of Russian opposition events and seminars across Europe during this period. The interviewed experts represent primarily senior roles at the educational projects under study (chief executive or other senior positions).

About the Author

Alexandra Yatsyk

Dr. Alexandra Yatsyk is a CEPA Russia Future Fellow, a researcher at the University of Lille, and an Adjunct Professor at Sciences Po, France. Her expertise covers identity-making in Eastern Europe and Russia, biopolitics, illiberalism, and memory. She served as a researcher in Europe and USA, including the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu, Polish Academy of Sciences, Uppsala Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies, the Institute of Advanced Studies in Warsaw, Vienna Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, and others. She co-authored the Critical biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: from Population to Nation (Lexington, 2019), Lotman’s Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), and co-edited New and Old Vocabularies of International Relations After the Ukraine Crisis (Routledge, 2016), Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance (Ibidem Verlag & Columbia University, 2018), and others.

Evgeny Roshchin

Dr. Evgeny Roshchin leads the Democratic Resilience program at CEPA and serves as a Visiting Scholar at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is the author of “Professorial Silence”, “Exit as Voice”, “Crime and Punishment in International Politics” and many other academic articles, and media commentaries.

Acknowledgments

The authors are indebted to the representatives of Russian civil society organizations, HEPs in exile, and international donor institutions who agreed to participate in the study and shared detailed insights into their work. The authors also thank reviewers for providing some of the data used in this report. In addition, they would like to thank members of CEPA’s staff, including Michael Newton, David Kagan, Isabella Nieminen, and Polina Tsurikova.

CEPA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, public policy institution. All opinions expressed are those of the author(s) alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.

1. Please see the end of the report for more details about methodology. [↩]
2. “Бакалавриат и магистратуру в России начнут отменять с 1 сентября” [Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Russia will begin to be phased out from September 1], The Moscow Times, January 29, 2026, https://ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/01/29/bakalavriat-imagistraturu-vrossii-otmenyat-s1sentyabrya-a185764 [↩]
3. “Russia” on “Country Graph,” V-Dem, https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/CountryGraph/. [↩]
4. “Foreign Agents and Undesirable Organizations: An Updated Database,” Inoteka, https://inoteka.io/ino/foreign-agents. [↩]
5. Universities and the System: ‘Groza’ Presents a Study on Russian Authorities’ Pressure on Students and Academia,” OVD-Info, June 20, 2025, https://reports.ovd.info/universitety-i-sistema#6-1. [↩]
6. Julia Mierau, ed., Academic Freedom in Russia: State Repression and Its Influence on Academic Practice (Science at Risk, December 2024), 19, https://science-at-risk.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/science-at-risk-monitoring-report-russia-2024-web.pdf. [↩]
7. “Universities and the System: ‘Groza’ Presents a Study on Russian Authorities’ Pressure on Students and Academia,” OVD-Info, June 20, 2025, https://reports.ovd.info/universitety-i-sistema#5-2. [↩]
8. Evgeny Roshchin, “Exit as Voice: Implications of Russia’s War for the Understanding of Dissent Under Authoritarianism,” Perspectives on Politics, June 26, 2025,  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/exit-as-voice-implications-of-russias-war-for-the-understanding-of-dissent-under-authoritarianism/AA53363DC314FF0D3C9CE411CFAD93B3. [↩]
9. Oleg Levin, “Утечка высокой степени” [High degree leak], Novaya Gazeta, January 18, 2024, https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/01/18/utechka-vysokoi-stepeni; and Alexander Kalgin and Sergei Mashukov, “Displaced Russian Academics. Networks, Markets, and Survival Strategies,” SCRIPTS Working Paper no. 56, 2025, p. 3, https://www.scripts-berlin.eu/publications/working-paper-series/Working-Paper-56-2025/SCRIPTS_Working_Paper_56_WEB-2.pdf. [↩]
10. “Обращение Российского Союза ректоров” [Appeal of the Russian Union of Rectors], Russian Union of Rectors, March 4, 2022, https://rsr-online.ru/news/2022/3/4/obrashenie-rossijskogo-soyuza-rektorov/. [↩]
11. “The Slow-Motion Collapse of Russian Higher Education,” OVD-Info, May 21, 2025, https://ovd.info/en/2025/05/21/slow-motion-collapse-russian-higher-education. [↩]
12. “Война с наукой: итоги десятилетия усилий по модернизации российской науки и высшего образования практически уничтожены за один год войны” [War on science: The results of a decade of efforts to modernize Russian science and higher education have been virtually destroyed in one year of war], Re: Russia, March 31, 2023, https://re-russia.net/review/226/. [↩]
13. “Военная кафедра в вузах” [Military departments in universities], Coalition Online School, October 10, 2022, https://blog.school-olymp.ru/voennaya-kafedra-v-vuzah/?ysclid=moak93mnt653580523; and “Вузы с военной кафедрой (военно-учебным центром)” [Universities with a military department (military training center)], Postupi Online, https://postupi.online/vuzi/voenkaf-da/. [↩]
14. Минобрнауки поручило вузам заставить подписать контракты минимум 2% студентов—Faridaily” [The Ministry of Education and Science has instructed universities to require at least 2% of students to sign contracts—Faridaily], Novaya Gazeta, April 1, 2026, https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/01/minobrnauki-poruchilo-vuzam-zastavit-podpisat-kontrakty-minimum-2-studentov-faridaily-news. [↩]
15. Cited in “269 вузов и колледжей агитировали службу в российских ‘войсках БПЛА’ среди студентов, в том числе на захваченных территориях Украины [269 universities and colleges promoted service in the Russian ‘drone troops’ among students, including in the occupied territories of Ukraine], Groza, April 3, 2026, https://www.groza.media/posts/agitatzia-bpla-voiska. [↩]
16. “269 вузов и колледжей агитировали службу в российских ‘войсках БПЛА’ среди студентов, в том числе на захваченных территориях Украины [269 universities and colleges promoted service in the Russian ‘drone troops’ among students, including in the occupied territories of Ukraine], Groza, April 3, 2026, https://www.groza.media/posts/agitatzia-bpla-voiska. [↩]
17. Sofya Smyslova, “Education in Exile as a Hope-Making Practice: The Case of Russian Higher Education Projects,” Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education 16 (3): 39–52, see p. 43. [↩]
18. Figure 4 was with DataWrapper and Canva based on data received from interviews with experts. [↩]
19. “Российские научные и образовательные проекты объединяются в Альянс” [Russian scientific and educational projects are uniting into an Alliance], Freedom Degree, April 6, 2026, https://www.freedomdegree.org/ru/community/blog/Eastern%20European%20Academic%20Alliance. [↩]
20. Sofya Smyslova, “Education in Exile as a Hope-Making Practice: The Case of Russian Higher Education Projects,” Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education 16 (3): 39–52, p. 39. [↩]