Russia declares Yale University ‘undesirable organisation’ over Navalny connection

Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office on Tuesday blacklisted Yale University as an “undesirable organisation”, accusing the Ivy League institution of trying to “destabilise” Russia and banning its activities in the country.

In a statement, the country’s top law enforcement oversight body said that Yale sought to “violate the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, impose an international blockade on the state, undermine its economic foundations and destabilise the socio-economic and political situation in the country”.

It also singled out a scholarship programme at the International Leadership Centre, hosted at the university’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, for “training opposition leaders of foreign states”.

Russian graduates of the programme included “leaders and activists of the extremist Anti-Corruption Foundation” founded by slain opposition figure Alexey Navalny, the Prosecutor General’s Office said, who it claimed later used their “knowledge and technology acquired at the school to escalate protest activity in the Russian Federation”.

Navalny himself received a scholarship to participate in the Yale World Fellows programme for global leaders in 2010, and in 2018, Navalny ally Leonid Volkov took part in the same programme.

Aside from the leadership programme, Yale was also working to establish a “legal justification for the seizure of Russian assets illegally held by Western countries for their subsequent use to finance the Armed Forces of Ukraine”, as well as calling for fresh sanctions to “significantly limit Russia’s economic potential”, the Prosecutor General’s Office said.

Russia has banned several Yale academics from entering the country in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a leadership expert who has tracked the activities of companies that remained in Russia after 2022 and called for tougher economic sanctions on Moscow, and Timothy Snyder, a Central and Eastern Europe scholar known for his work on authoritarianism and public support for Ukraine.

In Russia, any organisation deemed “undesirable” by the government is legally obliged to dissolve itself, and any involvement in its activities becomes illegal. Other organisations recently declared “undesirable” in the country include Amnesty International, the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the British Council.