Russian Disinformation and Western Scholarship

Western academics, experts, and journalists specializing in Eastern Europe, Russia and Eurasia have grappled with two fundamental analytical crises in connection with the 1991 disintegration of the USSR and Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Both crises were brought about by a similar lack of understanding of Moscow’s inability to view its neighbors, in particular Ukraine, as not possessing sovereignty and not treating them as independent states. Typically, they downplayed the historic and current role of Russian imperialism and nationalism. The book’s contributors investigate how the Kremlin’s recent turbo-charging of Russia’s information warfare, 24-hour TV, and social media activity has expanded on traditional pro-Russian sentiments among Western academics, experts, and journalists. The authors analyze the downplaying of Russian nationalism, misinterpretations of the 2014 crisis, sympathetic portrayals of Crimea’s occupation, and the use of the term “civil war” rather than “Russian-Ukrainian war” for the Donbas conflict in academia as well as the think tank world and media in the UK, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Japan, USA, and Canada.

Taras Kuzio is Professor of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society in London. He is the author and editor of 22 books, including Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War (Routledge 2022), The Sources of Russia's Great Power Politics (E-IR 2018, with Paul D’Anieri), Putin’s War Against Ukraine (University of Toronto and Dukh i Litera 2017, 2019), Ukraine: Democratization, Corruption and the New Russian Imperialism (Praeger 2015), Democratic Revolution in Ukraine (Routledge 2009), Ukraine – Crimea – Russia (ibidem 2007), and Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on Nationalism (ibidem 2007). Kuzio has guest-edited special issues of Communist and Post-Communist Studies, East European Politics and Society, Demokratizatsiya, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Nationalities Papers, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, and Problems of Post-Communism.