Russia’s selective openness comes with close surveillance

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s higher education system has undergone a profound transformation. Confronted by an international boycott, its withdrawal from the Bologna Process, and intensifying anti-Western rhetoric at home, Russian authorities are scrambling to project an image of stability by reorienting their educational partnerships.

This pivot involves banning cooperation with ‘hostile’ countries while actively pursuing academic mobility with new, sometimes unexpected, partners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Alongside these shifts, Moscow has set ambitious goals for foreign student enrolment and significantly revised university curricula.

Treaties vs reality

After launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia openly rejected cooperation with Europe and the United States. On 15 March 2022, Russia withdrew from the Council of Europe, preempting its likely expulsion. However, it remains technically bound by several European treaties on higher education, as it has not formally renounced them.

These include the European Convention on the General Equivalence of Periods of University Study (1990), the Protocol to the European Convention on the Equivalence of Diplomas leading to Admission to Universities (1964), and the European Convention on the Academic Recognition of University Qualifications (1959), which are designed to foster academic mobility. Legally, Russia is still committed to the values and rules laid out in these documents.

In reality, Russian state authorities have declared numerous Western educational institutions ‘undesirable’. This list includes universities and grant providers like Bard College, Yale University, the American Councils for International Education, and the British Council. This designation means that Russian citizens who engage with these organisations face serious legal risks, including possible criminal charges.

Cutting institutional ties, but maintaining individual links

After abandoning the Bologna Process, Russia’s Ministry of Science and Higher Education urged universities to avoid Erasmus+ exchange programmes, stopping short of an outright ban.

The European Commission, in turn, ceased co-operation with Russian state universities but left the door open for individual students to participate. Similarly, German organisations like the DAAD and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation have limited university-level cooperation but continue to support individual Russian students and researchers.

The number of Russian students on international scholarships has plummeted. In 2018, 4,000 Russians received DAAD scholarships; by 2022, that number had fallen to just 500.

Instead, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education is strengthening ties with Belarus, Vietnam, China, Colombia, Mexico, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Brunei, and Iran.

Programmes with Hungary and Serbia were even established after the war began. Russia continues its international cooperation, but on a smaller scale and only with countries not on its list of "unfriendly states" (in other words, countries that are not considered “enemies”).

New partners

Rossotrudnichestvo, Russia’s soft-power agency, is focusing its efforts on Africa. In 2024, it launched online preparatory faculties in Zambia, Tanzania, and Ethiopia to prepare students for admission to Russian universities, with plans to expand into humanities and medicine.

Since 2023, Russian universities have been actively signing agreements with African counterparts for student exchanges, joint conferences, and internships.

Vladimir Putin has announced plans to open Russian university branches in Africa that will teach in the Russian language. A new consortium of African and Russian technical universities has also been formed to train specialists for the mining and raw materials sectors.

Beyond Africa, Russia is planning to mutually recognise academic degrees with North Korea and increase student quotas from Vietnam. ‘Friendly’ European countries like Serbia are also involved in educational projects, including discussions about opening branches of Russian universities.

Ambitious goals meet strict controls

A presidential decree has set a target of enrolling 500,000 foreign students in Russia by 2030. As of 2025, the country hosts over 220,000 students from the Commonwealth of Independent States, 50,000 from China and 30,000 from India, who together make up about 77% of all foreign students.

Although Russian universities are officially welcoming, the country’s migration policy is becoming increasingly strict. Foreign students face far tighter controls than their Russian peers. For instance, at one university in the Urals, foreign students must check in every 72 hours at a special terminal under video surveillance.

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has also announced plans to closely monitor the legal status of foreign students, potentially placing all of them on a special ‘controlled persons’ registry.

From English to Chinese

Across Russia, English-language instruction is being scaled back to make room for ideological courses and other languages. The shift towards Chinese is particularly notable.

In 2023, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), a leading technical university, eliminated Spanish and made Chinese a compulsory subject alongside English. Presidential aide Andrei Fursenko justified this by noting that about 30% of scientific literature is now published in Chinese.

The study of some European languages persists, primarily because they are widely spoken elsewhere. For example, after Moscow’s Higher School of Economics signed an agreement with the private Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City, the Russian university planned to introduce Spanish courses as part of the new partnership.

A geopolitical pivot

Despite its remaining commitments to European educational integration, Russia has been deliberately pivoting away from Western partners since 2022. Cooperation with European and American institutions is no longer aligned with state interests, and engaging with them can be dangerous for students and academics inside Russia.

Russia’s new strategic partners are in China, Africa and Asia, a shift demonstrated by a wave of new agreements, programmes and preparatory faculties. While Russia formally declares its openness, its tightening migration policies and strict surveillance of foreigners create an unwelcoming environment.

In this complex and unpredictable political climate, academic cooperation inevitably suffers. Preserving such interaction is one of the few remaining channels for humanitarian and civic engagement between nations.

“Molnia” is an independent human rights project for Russian students.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.