Russian Disinformation and Western Scholarship: Bias and Prejudice in Journalistic, Expert, and Academic Analyses of East European and Eurasian Affair

Western academics, experts, and journalists specializing in Eastern Europe 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 similar lack of understanding by scholars, think tank experts, and journalists of Moscow’s relations with its neighbors. Typically, they were characterized by a downplaying of the historic and current role of Russian great power 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, Japan, The United States, and Canada.

The list of contributors includes: Olga Bertelsen (Tiffin University, Ohio), Paul D’Anieri (University of California at Riverside), Andrew Foxall (Henry Jackson Society, London), Andreas Heinemann-Grüder (University of Bonn), Shanshiro Hosaka (University of Tartu), Petro Kuzyk (Lviv National University), Michal Wawrzonek (Jesuit University Ignatianum, Krakow), Andrei Znamenski (University of Memphis, Tennessee), and Sergei Zhuk (Ball State University, Indiana).

Taras Kuzio is Professor of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. 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 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).