When we halt studying our enemies, we lose our intellectual advantage. For Ukraine and the West to boycott in-depth investigation on Russia is to become entangled in our own assumptions, make false expectations for the public, hazard losing their trust, and undermine our ability to form effective defence policies or counterstrategies.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine exposed the uncomfortable fact that the West – with all its rich traditions in political studies – may have lost that intellectual edge. Scholars have created a “warm bath” of liberal assumptions, reassuring us that democracy’s emergence is inevitable (Francis Fukuyama), or that large-scale force is simply a thing of the past (Steven Pinker). Of course, any voices challenged these claims, but donors, institutions and societies were content to keep believing the comforting paradigm that promised them peace and predictability.
Can these intellectual leaders be blamed for incompetence? Not exactly. Their calculations were methodologically sound, philosophically reasoned, and statistically supported. But they were grounded almost exclusively in western logic – where human life has value, economical benefit matters, societal welfare is simply a goal, advancement is desirable, and global law is simply a guiding framework. Putin besides weighs these things, but through a different lens: 1 of kleptocracy, historical revisionism, and imperial resurrection.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine – long regarded in the West as impossible, irrational and absurd – nevertheless took place. Today, the media reports that Russia has for years been cooperating with and financing far-right political movements, while besides helping them accomplish electoral success in countries like Germany, Romania and Moldova. It has been recruiting refugees to destabilize host societies, violating national borders, and consistently carrying out hybrid and cyber attacks. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has now publicly warned that within the next 5 years, Russia could launch a military assault on European members of the Alliance.
Is Europe ready to face Putin’s Russia? Does it truly realize its enemy? That is simply a complex question. On 1 hand, European leaders now issue strong statements about expanding defence spending; Russian threats are a regular subject at conferences; and think tanks routinely exposure Moscow’s influence operations across the continent. Finally, there seems to be a broad consensus that the Kremlin is simply a dangerous beast. But does Europe truly realize the nature of that beast?
Too little
Despite the sheer volume of discourse around Russia – hundreds of conferences, public debates, and government briefings – the actual academic investment remains amazingly modest. In monitoring leading European investigation platforms specified as EURAXESS and Academic Positions, I was struck by how small new, concrete investigation on Russia is being funded within European universities. Out of more than a 1000 open calls for PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers and fellows, only around 10 projects straight concern Russia – and almost no address its violent societal dynamics, war-related propaganda, cognitive warfare, or state-sponsored terror.
The overwhelming majority of grants go to engineering, computer discipline and the natural sciences. While these disciplines are undoubtedly essential, the imbalance is striking given the scale of the current threats. A fresh Pew investigation Center survey found that in 11 European NATO countries, crucial portions of right-wing parties now believe Putin is doing the right thing in global affairs. These parties are gaining momentum and electoral power. Is the increasing justification and acceptance of an unprovoked aggressor and convicted war criminal not a clear sign that Europe’s discourse on Russia is in crisis – and that the humanities must return to the centre of the strategical focus?
One might argue that defence ministries and think tanks are indeed taking Russian threats seriously – and their advancement in studying Russia is, to be fair, significant. But as the historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Tuchman observed in The Guns of August, military analysis is frequently shaped more by beliefs, biases and organization inertia than by nonsubjective reasoning. As she wrote: “What a staff makes out of the available evidence depends upon the degree of optimism or pessimism prevailing among them, on what they want to believe or fear to believe, and sometimes upon the sensitivity or intuition of an individual.”
This is where European universities should step in – to offer more independent and little doctrinaire research. Baltic countries are already doing this, backing studies on resilience, disinformation, Russian studies, and influence operations. But elsewhere in Europe – especially in the West and South – specified efforts are uncommon exceptions.
At a fresh meeting, I asked an assistant prof. at a Dutch university why there are so fewer funded PhD positions on Russian disinformation, terrorism and media literacy. She shrugged: “We don’t decide who gets the grants.”
Too refined
Another colleague of mine, who spent respective years as a investigator at a Swedish university, describes a akin tendency. According to her, many of the projects they proposed – focusing on Russian information warfare, war crimes and related issues – besides failed to safe funding. But she added something deeper: Europe, she said, inactive studies Russia in a “refined” way.
At 1 academic conference on war crimes, she presented unfiltered footage of Russian atrocities. After the session, she was diplomatically advised to reconsider specified material in the future – due to the fact that “the audience may not be ready for this.”
Refined means without impurities. And it is precisely in those “impurities” that academics tend to leave out the harshest – but most realistic – aspects of Russia, specified as its capacity to unleash barbaric, large-scale violence. Ukrainians have already paid the price for this illusion. due to their own refined perception of Russians, many civilians did not flee during the early days of business – and became victims of unspeakable war crimes. “Surely the Russians won’t kill defenceless civilians,” they told themselves.
Europe now risks repeating the same mistake. Scholars frequently avoid “politicizing” their research, hesitate to survey the aggressor directly, or proceed to invitation “good Russians” to academic platforms – voices that lull audiences with mirages of a liberal Russia. This sanitization of cognition risks turning intellectuals into “useful idiots”.
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Too slowly
There is besides the issue of speed. Let me offer an example from terrorism studies, which is my own field. For decades, terrorism was conceptualized as force carried out by non-state actors. erstwhile Russia has conducted proxy campaigns – whether through the Wagner Group in Africa and the mediate East, or mercenaries in the alleged Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics in Ukraine, which committed a global act of panic by downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 – it can inactive be classified as a “state sponsor of terrorism”.
But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marked by panic tactics and systematic war crimes, created a fresh question: what if the state itself is the terrorist?
Years later, no clear academic or legal framework has emerged to address this issue. Global political divisions have made it nearly impossible to codify specified a concept in global law. A 2024 report by the global Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) takes a bold step toward conceptualizing “Russian state terrorism” (and the author deserves credit for that), but even it concedes that the global academic community remains hesitant. As the study notes:
“Even if further designations of the country [as a state terrorist] do not materialise, it is useful to rise awareness of Russian engagement in specified [terrorist] activities for the benefit of the research, academic and expert milieu, which tended to see Moscow not as a foe or a threat, but more of a partner in countering jihadi terrorism.”
Not only is this absurd, it is offensive to Ukrainians, who are direct victims of Russian terror. Imagine if, during the 2010s, erstwhile Western European capitals were suffering deadly jihadist attacks, the US had suggested cooperating with ISIS to fight al-Qaeda. Unthinkable. Instead, the West studied ISIS profoundly and aggressively. Russia, by contrast, remains insufficiently examined.
This intellectual sluggishness may stem from the uncomfortable reality that studying Russia present requires a fundamental rethinking of long-established paradigms – and many in the West are simply not ready for that. As Ukrainian diplomat Volodymyr Ohryzko put it: “The West doesn’t know what Russia is. But worse – until late – it didn’t want to. due to the fact that it hasn’t yet decided what to do with specified a Russia.”
Sun Tzu famously wrote that “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you request not fear the consequence of a 100 battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for all triumph gained you will besides endure a defeat. If you know neither, you will succumb in all battle.”
Russia, it seems, knows the rules. It studies its enemies, invests in influence operations, conducts espionage, recruits proxies, and actively works to destabilize societal identities. Its goal is to plunge societies into chaos and uncertainty, eroding their resilience and capacity to resist. And Russia does all of this while Europe hesitates.
Europe must act – and invest in Russian studies that go beyond political correctness, beyond abstraction, and into the dark interior of what Russia is and what it is becoming. How did Bucha happen? Why did Russian soldiers carry out the mass execution of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war? The words of Dmytro Kuleba, then Ukraine’s abroad minister, deserve to be echoed here:
“Bucha did not happen in 1 day. For many years, Russian political elites and propaganda have been inciting hatred, dehumanizing Ukrainians, nurturing Russian superiority, and laying ground for these atrocities. I encourage scholars around the globe to investigation what led to Bucha.”
We must uncover the intellectual roots of Russian radicalization and cruelty, exposure the architecture of its propaganda, and make the intellectual tools essential to defend against a possible future full-scale war.
When Russia strikes, it will not be refined. It will be raw, real and full of impurities.
Ukrainian scholars already know what that face looks like. Bringing them into wider European academic investigation is not only prudent – it may be the most vital contribution to Europe’s knowing of the Russian threat.
Ihor Myslovskyi is a Ukrainian journalist, communications specialist, and investigator of media and terrorism. He has authored academic articles on how terrorism is covered in the media and on the evolving relation between terrorism and journalism. His expert columns on global politics, strategical communication, and Russia’s terrorist tactics and behaviour have appeared in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, European Pravda, Detector Media, and NV.
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