Baltic | Servants of the State: Russia's Faulty Expertise on Ukraine with Igor Gretskiy

By launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 with a rapid thrust toward Kyiv, the Kremlin’s political leadership appears to have counted on a swift victory. Russian propagandists, speaking in unison, claimed that the so-called “special military operation” would last no more than ten days. However, the determination of the Ukrainian people and armed forces thwarted the Kremlin’s initial plans. In April 2022, the Russian army regrouped, adjusted its tactics, and shifted to a broad-front offensive in southern and eastern Ukraine, marking the transition of the war into phase of attrition. The political decision to attempt to seize Ukraine in a blitzkrieg-style operation points to a clear underestimation of Ukraine’s capacity for resistance and raises questions about the role of the Russian expert community: how expertise on Ukraine is produced in Russia, who generates it, and how significant it is in Russia’s foreign policy formation. Drawing on available empirical material, this presentation systematizes data on the main centres of Russian expertise on Ukraine, analyses the key conceptual approaches used by Russian experts to interpret major developments in contemporary Ukrainian history, and assesses their influence on political decision-making in Russia. This event is sponsored by the Baltic Studies Program of Yale's MacMillan Center.