The number of international students attending Russian universities reached a new high of 351,500 last year, an 8% increase on the figure from 2021. This rise, no small feat given Russia’s increasing international isolation over the war in Ukraine, appears largely due to the Education Ministry’s decision to expand university quotas for foreigners and to introduce programmes to help overseas students finance their studies.
In 2021, Russia’s Education Ministry announced plans to raise the country’s foreign student quota from 17,000 to 30,000 by 2023, and Russia now has the sixth largest number of foreign students in the world studying in its universities, outranked only by the US (which has almost a million international students), the UK, Canada, France, and Australia.
The extra places have proved easy to fill, largely due to their price tag — the current exchange rate means that Russian tuition fees have become much more affordable. Moscow State University’s Faculty of Journalism currently charges around $5,000 per year, for example, while recent figures suggest that 15,000 foreign students receive scholarships or study grants of some kind.
For most foreign students, accommodation costs are negligible, with undergraduates at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics paying as little as 1,000 rubles (€10) per month for a bed in a student dormitory.
Foreigners enrolling at Russian universities tend to come primarily from former Soviet republics or countries in Asia, with students from Kazakhstan making up the largest number from any one country — some 62,500 in early 2023. China provides the second-highest number of foreign students, number just under 40,000, followed by Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, India, Egypt, and Belarus. Medicine and engineering, are the most popular fields of study among overseas students, according to the Education Ministry.
The quality of the education these students receive is not always consistent, however.
The QS World University Ranking, which assesses universities based on the quality of the research they produce and the graduate career prospects, included just one Russian university in its ranking list this year.
Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE) came in at 399, having dropped 100 places since 2021. The HSE also made The Times Higher Education’s list of top 100 law universities in 2021 but slipped off it by the following year.
We asked three foreign students attending Russian universities to explain why they opted to study in Russia and how they would describe their experiences so far. All their names have been changed at their request.
Isidor, a third-year linguistics student at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics from Latvia:
“I study here free of charge thanks to the international student quota. And, of course, I found it really attractive that there was no language or cultural barrier here at the HSE. In general, everyone told me that HSE was a great option: the programme is good, there are many travel opportunities, and the people — I knew a couple of them already — are cool. All of that turned out to be true, so I don’t have any regrets.
I studied for a year at a Latvian university before I came here, but I didn’t enjoy studying in Latvian. Also, theoretical linguistics isn’t taught in Latvia, so Russia is on another level. Many Russian students ask me why I chose to come to Russia and why I’m still here. They are mostly respectful, though they sometimes they make inoffensive jokes about Latvians. I haven’t really had any negative experiences.
As for the war, I remember talking about it with my roommate on 21 February [2022], and we agreed that something was about to happen. The morning of the 24 February, we read the news, but we weren’t really scared — there was a feeling of apprehension, it felt like something of global importance was happening, and we were sort of a part of it. My mum texted me and asked me if I wanted to leave Russia. But I said I didn’t want to. I like it here.
I think the war hasn’t been as hard for me as it has been for a lot of Russians. I know many Russians became depressed when the whole thing started, but maybe it’s just that I don’t identify as a part of this country that much. And I also knew I had a place to go, if necessary.
I’m certain that we’ll have career prospects. I haven’t heard about anyone being rejected from a master’s programme for having a Russian bachelor’s diploma. Attending conferences is also not a problem. People in academia understand what’s going on, and everyone is welcome.
We have an objectively strong programme here, so people abroad are interested in us. My plan for the future is to be a researcher. Once I’m done with my bachelor’s degree, I think I’ll do my master’s in Europe, and then maybe a PhD in the US. I’m definitely going to leave Russia anyway. I want to gain some experience elsewhere, in a different country with a higher quality of life, I think.”
Susie, a fourth-year journalism student at Moscow State University from China:
“I think the education in Russia is good, but not as good as it should be. I’ve studied the theoretical basics in my field already, and I wanted a more practice-oriented approach to see things from various angles. In China, when someone hears you have a tech or science degree from a renowned Russian university, they generally think you have great career prospects. But once they hear you have a social studies degree, they’re a little more sceptical.
I think most of the Chinese students who come to Russia to study do so because it’s easy to enrol and because the cost of living is low here.
Another important reason is the friendly relationship between our governments. Most Chinese people don’t know much about studying in Europe outside the UK, so they tend to choose Russia.
I think [international students] are treated fairly here. We have the same syllabus and the same teachers as the Russian students. One of my teachers organises extracurricular activities for foreign students, and she is very warm and friendly.
There is some prejudice as well, though, especially when it comes to accommodation, and it’s not just at our university: students from China often get assigned worse dormitories.”
Anna, a second-year design student at Kosygin State University from Macedonia:
“I started a fashion design programme in 2022. I’ve always wanted to be a fashion designer, and my university has a good programme. I arrived in Russia after the war in Ukraine had already started. Of course, I can’t believe that civilised people still use war as a means of solving problems. I was always taught that negotiation is the best solution. Nonetheless, I’m a student in Russia.
It’s cold here, and I often cry when I’m on the metro, but otherwise it’s more or less okay. I’ve made friends with the cockroaches in my dormitory. Despite the cold temperatures, the people here are warm. I haven’t met any other Macedonians at my university, but I have some friends in Macedonia who are planning to study in Russia in the future. I think my education will give me good career prospects.”
Zelensky’s war narrative is at odds with stark data. Recent figures reveal Ukrainian troops surrendering in significant numbers, challenging his counteroffensive claims.
Ukrainian troops surrendering en masse
In recent weeks, a significant number of Ukrainian troops have surrendered to the Russian military, utilizing a dedicated radio frequency established by the Russian armed forces, known as “Volga” with a call sign of 149.200. This frequency was set up during the summer and has been actively used by over 10,000 Ukrainian servicemen who subsequently surrendered to Russian custody. The radio frequency is operational along the entire front line.
The surrender process has gained momentum, especially in the vicinity of Rabotino, a village in the Zaporozhye Region. Rabotino has witnessed intense fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in recent weeks, remaining a major flashpoint in the conflict.
Despite Ukraine’s highly publicized counteroffensive launched in early June, Rabotino and its surroundings have not yielded significant gains for Ukrainian forces. Reports indicate that Ukrainian troops are suffering substantial casualties and equipment losses.
According to Moscow’s latest assessments, Kiev has incurred over 17,000 military casualties this month alone. Since the commencement of the counteroffensive, Ukraine has witnessed more than 83,000 military personnel fatalities, along with the destruction of over 10,000 pieces of heavy military equipment, as per the Russian military’s data.
The surrendering Ukrainian troops, utilizing the “Volga” frequency, are reportedly well-fed and receive necessary medical care. This significant surrendering of troops via radio communication underscores the complex dynamics and challenges faced by Ukrainian forces in the ongoing conflict with Russian military forces.
Silent Confirmations
During a pivotal moment in Ukraine’s history, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s optimistic statements clash with the grim reality on the ground. Retired Ukrainian Major General Sergey Krivonos also criticized Zelensky’s overly positive reports on the conflict, revealing a significant gap between rhetoric and the harsh conditions faced by Ukrainian forces.
Krivonos’ concerns highlight the disconnect between President Zelensky’s optimistic rhetoric and the harsh reality on the ground in Ukraine. He cautioned against underestimating the Russian Army’s experience and training, emphasizing that the conflict is not a one-sided victory. The revelation of Ukraine’s losses is grim, with approximately half a million troops lost since the start of the Russian military operation. This estimate is based on a combination of intelligence, open data, and various sources. Even a Ukrainian mobile operator, MTS-Ukraine, unintentionally confirmed the devastating death toll, revealing that around 400,000 individuals would never answer their phones again. This data is from just one operator, highlighting the scale of overall losses in the conflict.
Stoltenberg Unveils the toll of Zelensky’s counteroffensive
Even recently, during a European Parliament meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg indirectly confirmed the high casualty count in Ukraine, contributing to the acknowledgment of the grim reality faced by Ukrainian forces. These numbers, which approach 500,000 deaths, don’t even include the numerous injured soldiers, some of whom may never return to active duty, further straining Ukraine’s military capabilities. The situation is dire, raising doubts about the feasibility of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
Adding to the complexity, Stian Jenssen, Chief of Staff to Jens Stoltenberg, proposed an unconventional solution to the Ukraine conflict. He suggested Ukraine consider surrendering its eastern territories in exchange for NATO membership.
Now as the staggering casualties in Ukraine continue to mount, with an unofficial estimate approaching hundreds of thousands of deaths, the grim reality of the conflict cannot be ignored.
Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer with a distinguished record as a weapons inspector, seems to us among the most interesting analysts now looking at the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine from the perpective of a man who once wore a uniform. We recently met Ritter at Mut zur Ethik, a twice-a-year forum in Zurich’s environs, and were much taken by his view of the war and its broader significance. We are pleased to welcome Ritter into our pages (and plan soon to publish a Q & A we conducted while in Switzerland). Here we reproduce one of the speeches Ritter delivered, of several, at the Mut zur Ethik gathering held 1–3 September.
1 SEPTEMBER—It’s an honor and a privilege to be here to have an opportunity to talk to you. I wish we could talk about better subjects. I wish we were in a time we could talk about moving forward with a confidence the world would move forward with us, but we live in difficult times.
Today I’ve been asked to address “global geopolitics in the context of the Ukrainian conflict.” I think when historians look back on the events that are transpiring today you’re going to be speaking of “BU” and “AU” the same way we speak of “BC” and “AD.” “BU” is “before Ukraine,” “AU” is “after Ukraine.” The Ukrainian war, ladies and gentlemen, has changed everything.
The world that exists today is a fundamentally different world than existed before the conflict in Ukraine began. And when I say “the conflict in Ukraine” let’s just be clear: In reality, the conflict in Ukraine has been going on for decades. But the conflict I speak of is the conflict that has transpired since the decision by Vladimir Putin to send Russian troops into Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022.
I have the honor and privilege twice a year to advise a board of some of the world’s most powerful and influential people, and those, of course, are people who operate in the oil and gas industry They make a lot of money and money equals power.
I was brought in to talk geopolitics, and for several years now I’ve been hammering away at two things trying to convince these leaders of global industry that the world is evolving, that you need to evolve with it or you are going to be left behind. I spoke of the fact that the world is evolving away from an American singularity to a multipolarity, where America is no longer viewed by the world as the global hegemony—where, instead, America will have to learn to participate in a global community of equals. They have said, “No. Because that would require America to depart from the rules-based international order.” Which, of course, are rules that the United States wrote in the aftermath of the Second Word War to continue to empower ourselves.
The rules-based international order is a sharp deviation from the principles, for instance, of the United Nation’s Charter, which speaks of multipolarity, global equality, and all that kind of nonsense. When I say “nonsense,” I mean from an American perspective because we don’t believe in any of that, we believe in the sole empowerment of the United States.
Many of these leaders of industry are American. They lead multinational corporations, but the multinational corporations don’t enrich multi-nations. They enrich the United States. Therefore, they need the rules-based international order to continue to exist, to maintain the system of enrichment that they have put in place over the course of the past 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years.
The other thing I brought up to them is that for those who believe that America can impose its will on the world no matter what. Even if we run into an economic hiccup, we will be able to resolve this hiccup in our favor by projecting military power, which is unmatched: There is nobody in the world that can match the Americans in terms of military power. I said, “Those days are over, too.”
They did not want to hear this. But I brought up the reality that twenty years of endless war in the so-called global war on terror had fundamentally transformed the lethality of the American military. No longer were we trained, armed, equipped, or prepared to fight a land-based war in Europe or a large-scale conflict in the Pacific. We, instead, had broken our military in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria—we no longer had the skill set. They didn’t want to hear that, either. They said, “No. America has aircraft carriers, America has armored brigades, America is America and the world will never be able to defeat America.”
That was “before Ukraine.” After Ukraine, a new reality has set in. Before Ukraine, the United States was able to convince Europe that Russia could be sanctioned into submission. I know we laugh about it today, when we reflect on the ludicrous nature of the overconfidence of those who thought so. But those who have memories that can go back simply two years remember, in the leadup to the conflict, how the United States said over and over and over again, “We will bring Russia to its knees.” That, “Together with the West, we will sanction Russia, we will break the will of Russia. Russia will fold. Even if Russia were to go into Ukraine militarily they could not sustain this attack because their economy will fail.”
Ladies and gentlemen, the Russian economy today is stronger than it has ever been largely because of the economic sanctions: “before Ukraine,” “after Ukraine.” But it’s more than simply the empowerment of the Russian economy. It’s how the world thinks about America: The American singularity is over.
Just the other week there was a meeting in South Africa of the BRICS organization—five “developing nations,” we call them. Is China a developing nation? Is India a developing nation? These are developed nations. Now, they haven’t been able to come together before Ukraine. There were internal squabbles: India and China didn’t get along, the Russian economy wasn’t so hot. Who knew about Brazil? Was the African continent ready for development? These are questions that were thrown out there. There is no longer talk about that. BRICS prior to last week was a concept that had promise. BRICS today is a reality that has changed the world. Notice that I didn’t say “changing” the world. I said “changed the world.”
Let me tell you what happened when BRICS came together and expanded. America went from being number one to being number two. The day of the American singularity is over. It’s past, it’s done, it’s finished, it’s gone. We haven’t, maybe, realized it yet. Americans might believe that we’re still number one, but we’re not. We’ve been bypassed by BRICS. Well, you’ll say, “Wait a minute Scott, that’s many nations.” What do you think multipolarity means, ladies and gentlemen? It means many nations working together. And multipolarity is no longer a theory: It’s a reality.
The reality of BRICS is such that America is number two. It will forever be number two because it will not have the economic strength to surpass the multipolar organization known as BRICS, which is expanding as we speak. And an interesting thing about BRICS is that we tried to keep Russia off the agenda. We tried to keep Vladimir Putin away from that meeting. He attended by proxy with his foreign minister, [Sergei] Lavrov. He attended by video. He dominated the proceedings, ladies and gentlemen. Russia will be the chair of BRICS starting in January 2024. When BRICS expands from its current membership of five, adding six, Vladimir Putin will be the head of BRICS. And when BRICS meets again next summer and they talk about brining ten nations in, Vladimir Putin will be the head of BRICS.
It’s backfired. Everything we do has backfired. And it’s not just economically. Militarily: Prior to Ukraine, before Ukraine, BU—I’m trying to inject this concept into people’s minds—before Ukraine, people did fear the American military. With good cause. We go to war a lot. There is lethality associated with what we do. In Europe, NATO believed that it was a powerful military alliance. NATO believed that when NATO flexed its muscle people listened—before Ukraine. After Ukraine, NATO has been exposed as a paper tiger. A paper tiger.
There is no military strength in NATO. NATO has no capacity to project meaningful military power beyond the borders of Europe. NATO cannot fight a war along the lines of the war that’s being fought in Ukraine today. Don’t believe me, believe General Christopher Cavoli, four-star American general, commander of U.S. forces, supreme allied commander. He said in a Swedish defense forum last January (2022), that NATO could not imagine the scope and scale of the violence taking place in Ukraine today. Think about that.
What do military people do? We prepare for the future. We prepare for the future based upon what we imagine. We imagine something, we create capabilities to meet that which we imagine. If we have not imagined the scope and scale of the violence taking place in Ukraine today, that means we’re not ready for it. We haven’t trained for it, we haven’t equipped for it, we haven’t organized for it. We can’t fight it. And this is a fact.
Right now there’s a counteroffensive taking place in Ukraine. The Ukrainian army has three brigades trying to take the town, the village, of Robotyne. Three brigades. That’s 15,00 men. Imagine NATO putting three brigades on the line right now. They can’t. NATO cannot put three brigades on the line. But imagine if they did: They’ve assaulted the village, they’ve been repulsed by the Russians. So three brigades are now being pulled out, three more are being brought in, in a complex passage of lines. NATO has not done a six-brigade passage of lines ever. And Ukraine is doing it under fire. They’re failing, but they are doing it. [Editor’s note: As of 8 September, Moscow acknowledged withdrawing forces from Robotyne.]
That war that’s taking place right now in Zaporizhzhia, in Kherson, in Luhansk, in Donetsk: It’s a war that NATO cannot fight. And now the world knows it. NATO is a paper tiger. The world knows it’s a paper tiger. They know the United States cannot meet its stated desire to reinforce Europe in a fashion. Ukraine has lost 400,000 men in battle, 40,000 to 50,000 in the last several weeks. It took America ten years to lose 58,000 in Vietnam and that broke our back. Can you imagine a situation where the United States military was asked to sacrifice 40,000 men in two weeks? Can you imagine a situation when any European army was asked to sacrifice 40,000 men in two weeks? The fact of the matter is: We can’t win a war today in Europe. We’re not number one anymore. We’re not number two anymore. We might be number three.
But this is a reality. It’s not just in Europe that we can’t prevail. It’s in the Pacific. Don’t believe me, believe Lieutenant General Samuel Clinton Hinote. He was the deputy chief of staff of the United States Air Force. He just recently retired. But his job was strategy. And what he did for the last four years is war-game every potential scenario of conflict between the United Sates and China in the Pacific. And he recently, before his retirement, went to the Pentagon and went to the White House, and said the following: Cease and desist your policies that push us to a potential military confrontation with China. Because if it does become a kinetic fight between the United States and China, there is no scenario in which we win. We lose every single time. And there is nothing we can do in the immediate future to change that outcome. We have to change the way we interface with China.
That’s why Tony Blinken went to China in July. You remember that trip? He went—he had to go through thirty Chinese officials before he got to Xi Jinping—for a thirty-minute lesson in humility. The reason why he had to go there is because the United States had to hit pause on its China policy: Stop the path towards confrontation. We had just had a situation in the Strait of Taiwan where an American ship was almost rammed by a Chinese ship. And the Pentagon said, “If they do hit us, what do we do? Sink them?” And now the scenarios begin: If we sink them they retaliate, we retaliate, how does it end? Well, General Samuel Clinton Hinote said that it ends only one way every time: America loses.
This is the reality today. We lose because we don’t have the capacity. But before Ukraine nobody understood that. Nobody believed that. Everybody believed that America was the supreme military power in the world. Today, the blinders have come off. Economically, we’re number two. Maybe we can maintain that position, maybe not. Militarily, we’re number three. And who knows where we’ll go with that. Because our military is a broken system. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a system that produces nothing beneficial to the defense of the United State. Let alone the defense of its allies. How can you spend $900 billion a year and say we can’t fight and prevail in a land war in Europe against the Russian army that spends $68 billion a year? It’s because our system is broken. But that’s another question.
Ukraine has changed everything. Before Ukraine, America was number one, at least perception-wise. After Ukraine, American is number two economically, number three militarily, and this is a reality that the world is accepting. It’s not Scott Ritter saying this in a closed community to oil and gas executives. It’s Scott Ritter saying this while the rest of the world acknowledges this. Russia knows this. Russia no longer fears the American military. It’s not that they want to go to war against the America military, but Russia knows its capabilities. It’s been tested. China knows this, as well.
When will Europe know it? When will Europe realize that NATO is a false prophet? When will Europe realize that the money you put into NATO is wasted money? When will Europe realize that instead of pursuing war you should be pursuing peace? It’s time for Europe to wake up. Because if you don’t, if you continue to believe in the myth of American hegemony, the myth of American supremacy—because it is a myth, it isn’t real anymore, it exists in the minds of American politicians, but it doesn’t exist in the way the world operates today. Europe has to decide: Do you want to become a prisoner in a cage of your own construct? Because that’s what’s happening. The world is bypassing America. The world is moving on with their collective life. And the American singularity is in the rearview mirror going backwards.
Thank you very much.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union (Clarity, 2023). He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, served on General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and, from 1991 to 1998, was a chief weapons inspector with the U.N. in Iraq. In addition to his writing arms control and nonproliferation, Ritter currently writes commentary and analysis on international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East. His Substack newsletter can we read here.
Russia Analytical Report, Russia Matters, Week of 9/25/23 -10/2/23
The U.S. and its allies should avoid “optimism in regard to nuclear risk” emanating from “Russian nuclear coercive diplomacy,” according to Stephen Cimbala of Penn State University and Lawrence Korb of Georgetown, who have three concerns about such optimism. “First, the United States and NATO cannot and should not assume that Russian reasoning about nuclear deterrence and escalation will follow a logic similar to that of their Western counterparts,” they write in BAS, criticizing the Western scholars who “dismiss[s] too abruptly the possibility of Russian escalation to nuclear weapons use.” “Second, escalation need not be the outcome of deliberate forethought,” they write, “no one should underestimate what Ukraine and NATO have already accomplished in this war … without provoking nuclear escalation.” This commentary appeared after the publication of multiple reports in Western media warning that Russia has increased construction on the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya, which was one of the USSR’s nuclear weapons testing locations. Last week, director of Russia’s Kurchatov Center Mikhail Kovalchuk saidRussia should consider resuming nuclear tests and called for revising Russia’s nuclear deterrence.*
When assessing signaling from Moscow, one should avoid interpreting recent saber-rattling by figures such as the Kurchatov Center’s Kovalchuk and SVOP’s Sergei Karaganov as a “decisive shift within the [Russian] leadership” on the use of nuclear weapons, according to Tatiana Stanovaya of R.Politik. Putin values Kovalchuk’s input but may disagree with his views, she writes. As for Karaganov, “while his provocative suggestions are frequently used in certain quarters to push an agenda (such as the Security Council), his interventions cause irritation among others (such as the Ministry for Foreign Affairs),” according to the founder and head of R.Politik.
“Never before has [the U.S.] faced four allied antagonists at the same time—Russia, China, North Korea and Iran—whose collective nuclear arsenal could within a few years be nearly double the size of its own,” Robert Gates warns in his article for FA. The former U.S. secretary of defense warns that “dysfunction has made American power … unreliable,” hindering Washington’s efforts to deter Beijing and Moscow. “To ensure that Washington is in the strongest possible position to deter its adversaries from making … strategic miscalculations, U.S. leaders must first address the breakdown in the decades-long bipartisan agreement with respect to the United States’ role in the world,” according to the ex-CIA director.
Ukraine will not be able to win the war and regain all its territory “in the absence of a collapse of either the Russian government or the Russian army’s morale, neither of which seems imminent,” according to Niall Ferguson of Stanford University. Thus, “[r]ather than risk a protracted war with the added danger of waning Western support, Ukraine needs to lock in what it has already achieved,” taking a cue from South Korea, according to this senior Belfer Center fellow’s column in Bloomberg. According to the Sept. 26 issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card published by the Belfer Russia-Ukraine War Task Force, Ukraine endured a net loss of 15 square miles of its territory in the preceding month.
In an effort to clarify his recent on Russia’s conditions for peace with Ukraine, which some interpreted as a shift toward recognition of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov granted an interview on Sept. 28 to signal that Moscow has not abandoned its demands for recognition of its land grabs in Ukraine. Speaking at the U.N., Lavrov said on Sept. 23: “Of course, we recognized the sovereignty of Ukraine back in 1991, on the basis of the Declaration of Independence. One of the main points for us in the declaration was that Ukraine would be a non-bloc, non-alliance country; it would not join any military alliances. In that version, on those conditions, we support Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” Five days later, however, Lavrov told TASS that “our position remains the same: we are ready to come to terms, taking into account the realities on the ground.” “It is also imperative to take into account our security interests and prevent the creation of a hostile … regime on our borders,” he added.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, announcing that the House of Representatives will pursue an impeachment inquiry, suggested that the probe will hinge in part on deceiving the American public about Hunter Biden’s foreign business ventures.
“President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business deals,” McCarthy said at a press conference. GOP lawmakers, he added, have “uncovered credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct.”
Such an investigation will likely force an examination of the public narrative regarding Hunter Biden’s consulting deals that go back at least a decade. During President Obama’s second term, then-Vice President Joe Biden was the administration’s point man on the nation’s policy toward Ukraine, a perch he used to urge the country to resist “the cancer of corruption” and enact sweeping ethics reforms.
At the time, some American journalists began to question whether the vice president’s stern message was undermined by his son Hunter Biden’s employment at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which was owned by a notorious local oligarch.
Emails on Hunter’s laptop reveal that the inquiries sparked an internal debate within his team of consultants and public relations agents. Ultimately, they devised a series of responses about Hunter’s work with Burisma that were, at best, misleading and, at worst, outright falsehoods.
The Biden team has constructed a careful image of Hunter Biden’s business ventures, sometimes employing a sophisticated myth-making operation aided by allies in the media who rarely challenged or investigated their false claims. The laptop emails show that the team closely monitored critical reporting and pushed to shape coverage with reporters from the New York Times, Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press.
Their spin informed much of the ensuing coverage in the mainstream press, defusing the issue, even as President Trump and other Republicans insisted that Ukraine was a hotbed of Biden family corruption. Although he had no background in the energy field and little experience in corporate governance, Hunter Biden, who had a law degree, was appointed to the board of Burisma in May 2014.
Washington Post
It was revealed later that he was paid about $1 million per year – as was his business partner Devon Archer. In a press release announcing his appointment, Hunter Biden is quoted as saying, “I believe that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”
That same month, journalist Michael Scherer reached out with questions about the arrangement.
Several consultants employed by Burisma, including Ryan Toohey of FTI Consulting and Heather King, a partner at the law firm Boies, Schiller, & Flexner, where Hunter worked as counsel, strategized over how to respond to Scherer, a reporter then with Time magazine who has since joined the Washington Post.
For the Scherer inquiry, laptop emails show, Hunter’s business associates settled on a strategy to deflect the most direct questions and obfuscate the true intent of Burisma’s attempts to sway U.S. government officials.
One of Hunter’s associates noted that they planned to respond to Scherer’s attempts to reach David Leiter, a former aide to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, hired to work for Burisma. The plan was to use an assistant to make Leiter “unavailable to comment, as opposed to some sort of statement that made it seem like we were unwilling or refusing to engage with the reporter.” Leiter, the emails show, was in fact available, but the public relations team wanted to keep him out of reach.
FTI Consulting
Scherer wanted to know why Burisma was on a hiring spree of well-connected American lobbyists, including Leiter and others. In response, Toohey planned to tell Scherer that the hired guns were simply working on issues related to energy independence, economic growth, as well as “transparency and good governance.”
In response to other questions posed by Scherer, Toohey prepared a statement claiming that Hunter Biden will “not be engaged with the U.S. government” on anything related to Burisma.
The response belied a detailed lobbying agenda spelled out in other emails.
Burisma had made clear that the company had hired Leiter, Hunter Biden, and other political operatives as part of a focused plan to obtain Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky a U.S. visa as well as to persuade American officials to intervene with Ukrainian government officials to drop an investigation of his business interests.
In a May 2014 email, Vadym Pozharskyi, a close adviser to Zlochevsky, explained to Hunter that he needed his “advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message/signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” a reference to an ongoing investigation of Zlochevsky by Ukrainian prosecutors.
That month, Pozharskyi again wrote to Hunter, spelling out the “working plan for both FTI and David,” reiterating that he wanted the lobbyists to intervene against the “politically motivated proceedings initiated against us in Ukraine” and to overcome the “US entry ban” for the Burisma owner.
“The immediate plan is to reach out to the Energy and Ukraine desks, respectively, at State Dept,” wrote Heather King, the attorney working closely with Hunter Biden at the time. “That will include outreach to Carlos Pascual, he is the top US energy diplomat,” she added.
Scherer printed the denials, but to his credit, reported on the odd circumstances surrounding Biden’s hiring, at a time when Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point person for Ukraine, with a special focus on energy policy in the region.
In many cases, Hunter Biden’s associates cast him as simply an auditor with a special focus on renewable energy sourced from geothermal vents. That was the strategy in response to an inquiry from Stephen Braun, a reporter for the Associated Press. “Mr. Biden will not lobby on behalf of Burisma. His role is to advise the company’s legal and compliance unit, including guidance on corporate governance standards.”
Behind the scenes, Hunter Biden’s team knew otherwise. In emails conferring over how to deal with Braun’s questions, one lobbyist reiterated the plan to provide Braun with “minimum information.”
Like many other articles from this time, the AP story focused on the conflict of interest issues, noting the denials around any lobbying with a degree of skepticism:
Stephen Braun, AP: The plan was to provide him with “minimum information.”
AP/YouTube
A former Washington lobbyist, the vice president’s son is effectively exempt from most rules that would require him to describe publicly the legal work he does on behalf of Burisma.
Hunter Biden will not lobby for the company, said Lawrence Pacheco, an official with FTI Consulting, a Washington government affairs company recently hired by Burisma.
Pacheco did not say whether Biden might oversee or advise on any future Burisma lobbying strategy in the U.S. Pacheco said the company “does not take positions on political matters.”
Braun could not be reached for comment. Scherer declined an opportunity to comment on the Hunter Biden emails. Biden, Toohey, and King did not respond to a request for comment.
However, the emails clearly indicate that substantial resources were allocated to managing both Burisma and Hunter’s personal image. Pozharskyi pointed out that Burisma had retained American consultants to reach out to “the most reputable European and American journalists/newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs,” while assistance was required to handle Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other online platforms. Burisma, wrote Pozharskyi, sought a “detailed algorithm on how the Company should act in case of bad publicity.” The effort included scrubbing negative details from Hunter Biden’s Wikipedia, while bolstering the online credentials of Burisma, emails show.
A highly focused effort to monitor and shape news media coverage helped maintain the public profile. Even with relatively low visibility, independent media were closely watched. Hunter and his team monitored Vice News as well as the gadfly website ZeroHedge. In response to critical reporting from Vice, one colleague noted approvingly that the article was not being “reposted or republished” in Ukrainian media.
In July 2014, Toohey circulated an investigative piece I wrote for Salon about Hunter Biden’s hiring at Burisma, which noted that the vice president’s son had been retained amid a string of nepotistic hires likely aimed at influencing natural gas and energy policy.
In the article, I noted that Joe Biden had traveled to Ukraine to “announce a $50 million aid package that included technical support for increasing the country’s natural gas production – an investment that could bolster profits at Burisma Holdings, where his son is a director.” What was not known at the time, however, was that Hunter Biden was already working with a team of public affairs consultants to channel U.S. government technical assistance to his client.
The laptop emails show that even this relatively brief mention of Hunter Biden and a potential conflict of interest with his father raised concerns.
“All, please see below a piece that mentions Hunter’s appointment as part of a broader trend, mostly within the context of relatives of eleceds [sic] engaged to lobby for the energy industry,” wrote Toohey, attaching a copy of the text of my piece. But, he added, “This was a freelanced piece picked up in a number of web-based outlets including Salon, but nothing with significant reach.”
Pozharskyi replied that he had seen the piece earlier and “wanted to have a discussion in this regard.”
In some cases, the team celebrated media coverage that elevated its desired narrative. Politico reported Hunter’s hiring at Burisma and simply printed quotes from the company’s official statements:
“The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals,” Alan Apter, Burisma Holdings’ chairman of the board of directors, said in a statement, which was reported by The Moscow Times on Tuesday.
Biden, joining the board, will be in charge of the legal unit, the company said. He will also provide support for Burisma Holdings “among international organizations.”
Biden said the company will help strengthen Ukraine’s economy.
Pozharskyi circulated a link to the Politico article to Hunter and his associates, noting the “positive coverage.”
Slowking4/Wikimedia
Hunter’s membership on the Burisma board received renewed attention in late 2015, as then-Vice President Biden was set to visit Ukraine where he planned to address the parliament on the need to adopt new reforms against a culture of corruption in the country. James Risen of the Times, among others, renewed inquiries directed toward Hunter and his associates about the rationale behind his appointment to the company, Burisma, and why the company appeared to be buying access to high levels of government.
In one email found on Hunter’s laptop, Risen asked, “What lobbying activities is the company engaged in the US?” among other questions to Hunter Biden. In response, a Burisma spokesperson straightforwardly claimed that “no one is lobbying on their behalf.”
The company’s lobbying efforts were not covered in the story ultimately published by the New York Times, which featured Risen’s piece on Dec. 8, 2015. The article included a statement from the Hunter Biden team, crafted by the strategy firm FTI Consulting, asserting that the company’s focus was on “corporate governance and transparency.”
Risen’s article did not address whether Hunter’s business career demonstrated such expertise or his lack of experience in the energy field. Although Risen identified Hunter as “a former Washington lobbyist,” he accepted the denial that no lobbying was involved.
In reality, just a month prior to the email exchange with the Times, Burisma, following Hunter Biden’s advice, had hired Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic lobbying firm, to influence the Obama administration. A copy of the agreement, belatedly filed with the Justice Department, reveals that the firm, which aided in lobbying State Department officials on Ukrainian energy policy, received a monthly retainer of $30,000.
Blue Star Strategies was even copied on the emails with the Hunter Biden team on its response plan to Risen.
Risen also allowed a Burisma spokesman to decline to state Hunter’s compensation while claiming it was “not out of the ordinary” for such board positions. It was later disclosed that he was paid about $1 million per year, which is far higher than the typical compensation. As a point of comparison, median annual compensation of board members at Fortune 500 companies is around $110,000.
Risen, now with The Intercept, did not respond to a request for comment.
Blue Star Strategies
Political operatives of all ideological backgrounds frequently manipulate public perception – often employing specialized “crisis communication” firms to suppress negative coverage and shape desired narratives. What is remarkable about the Hunter Biden episode is how successful it was, and how uncritically most media organizations treated this unorthodox relationship between a president’s son and a controversial foreign corporation.
In response to the Wall Street Journal, Toohey worked closely with Blue Star Strategies’ Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano to craft a message defusing questions around a conflicting message between Hunter and his father. They settled on a strategy of presenting the Ukrainian gig as perfectly “aligned” with an anti-corruption agenda, laptop emails show. The lobbyists suggested that they release a statement to the Journal claiming that Hunter’s work for the Ukrainian energy giant, to supposedly strengthen corporate governance, are “also goals the United States.”
The Journal printed the statement, attributing it to a spokesperson.
LinkedIn
Such coverage – which suggested Hunter Biden had engaged in questionable but ultimately harmless behavior that did not involve, much less implicate, his father – set the narrative for most coverage in mainstream outlets. When President Trump told Ukraine’s president in 2018 that “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son” and asked him to look into Joe Biden’s demand that the prosecutor looking into Burisma be fired, Democrats moved to impeach him.
The Biden spin continued even after the New York Post published the first articles based on material from Hunter’s laptop in October 2020. The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, sought to discredit the New York Post’s reporting that Hunter Biden had arranged a dinner meeting between his Ukrainian associates at Burisma and his father when he served as vice president. At the time, the Biden presidential campaign claimed that it “reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time, and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.” Kessler reiterated this denial as though it were an established fact.
It turned out to be false. The July testimony by former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer confirmed that Hunter Biden had arranged a secret dinner with his Ukrainian business partner and his father, as the New York Post had originally reported. The ongoing saga over the Washington Post’s role in discrediting the Biden revelations was detailed last month by RealClearInvestigation’s Paul Sperry.
Also last month, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, who has dismissed any hint of scandal regarding Biden business dealings, appeared on Live at the Table, a podcast hosted by Noam Dworman, the owner of New York City’s Comedy Cellar. The show went viral as Dworman challenged Bump’s claims that there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
In a heated exchange, Bump conceded that Hunter Biden’s text messages that claim, “unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary,” was one form of “evidence.” Moments later, Bump ended the interview and walked off the set.
The interaction provided a rare moment of visible accountability for the establishment press, which has largely followed the Biden spin for an entire decade on this issue.
Yet the White House is still hoping it can still instruct journalists on how to cover the story. Shortly after McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry announcement, President Biden’s White House staff circulated a memo, instructing media outlets on how to cover the news. In bold type, the memo claimed that the entire Hunter Biden conflict of interest scandal had been “refuted” and “debunked” – language that was adopted in media reports about the inquiry in Vox, NBC News and CNN.
Lee Fang is an independent journalist based in San Francisco. He writes an investigative newsletter on Substack via www.leefang.com.
