The Russia research fellow at a prominent British think tank has been banned from entering Russia, as part of a new round of sanctions.
Professor Taras Kuzio, 64, was born and still lives in Yorkshire. He is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. His research focuses on Russian aggression towards Ukraine and he is well-known for having predicted the 2014 invasion of Crimea.
He was named on an additional list of sanctionees published today on the website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He becomes the first British academic to be sanctioned for researching the conflict.
“I will wear as a badge of honour being barred by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from entering Vladimir Putin’s dystopian dictatorship. I am very happy to learn the Kremlin dislikes what I write and do in response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and its war crimes.
This is the third time the Kremlin has shined a spotlight on me. The first was in 1990 when I was not allowed to enter the USSR and the second was during the 2013-14 Euromaidan Revolution when I was added to a blacklist. In both cases, blacklisting came about because of my activities in support of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Empire, its democratic development and right to join the European family of nations.
The Kremlin’s new blacklisting, will not prevent me from continuing to pursue these goals, as I have done for more than three decades.”
Prof Taras Kuzio
“It is no surprise that HJS is the first think tank to be targeted by Russian sanctions, for years we have also fallen foul of cyber-attacks and aggression from the Russian state.
No matter how much they throw at us, however, our team of researchers will continue to tell the truth about Russia and work to develop solutions for how the UK may respond.”
Dr Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society
About Prof Taras Kuzio
Taras Kuzio is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Political Science, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. His previous positions were at the University of Alberta, George Washington University, and University of Toronto, International Institute of Strategic Studies, German Marshall Fund of the US and Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Taras Kuzio holds a PhD in political science from the University of Birmingham, England, an MA in Area Studies (USSR, Eastern Europe) from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, and a BA in Economics from the School of European Studies, University of Sussex. He held a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Yale University.
Taras Kuzio is the author and editor of 22 books, including Russian Disinformation and Western Scholarship (2022); Ukraine’s Outpost: Dnipropetrovsk and the Russian-Ukrainian War (2022); Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War. Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality (2022), Crisis in Russian Studies. Nationalism (Imperialism), Racism and War (2020), (co-author) The Sources of Russia’s Great Power Politics: Ukraine and the Challenge to the European Order (2018), Putin’s War Against Ukraine. Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime (2017, 2019), Ukraine. Democratization, Corruption, and the New Russian Imperialism (2015), From Kuchmagate to Orange Revolution (2009), and Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on Nationalism (2007).