Russia has declared ZOiS an ‘undesirable organisation’

On Friday 13 October 2023, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation declared the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin an ‘undesirable organisation’. We thus join a long list of academics and institutions that are equally ‘undesirable’ in Russia.

The statement comes at a time when ZOiS had already stopped all institutional cooperation with Russian state authorities – including Russian institutions of higher education – for more than a year and a half, since Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine. Free social science research has not been possible for us in Russia for a long time either. Therefore, this classification does not so much affect our current research activities but is rather directed against those academics and partners with family links to Russia here and elsewhere who, despite everything, remain committed to academic freedom and good scientific practice. They have our solidarity.