Putin's Top Spy Blames Russia's Brain Drain on 'Cheating' West

The head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has accused Western adversaries of manipulating global university rankings and "luring" students from abroad, thus creating a damaging brain drain for Asian and African nations.

Sergey Naryshkin, who has served as SVR director since 2016, told the Eastern Economic Forum in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok that "neo-colonial approaches in the fields of education and science" are hampering non-Western nations, as quoted by The Moscow Times.

"Bias, which sometimes develops into cheating when ranking the world's leading universities, obstruction of the development of national education systems and unscrupulous luring of talented youth from Asian and African countries, turn many non-Western societies into forced donors of intellectual capital," Naryshkin said at the annual event, traditionally a key diplomatic platform for Moscow.

The supposed Western approach, Naryshkin said, shows "disrespect for other peoples and cultures," and a belief in Western superiority. "The false thesis about the lack of alternative to the Western path of development and the historical predetermination of Western dominance in international affairs has already caused considerable damage and suffering to all of humanity," Naryshkin added.

The spy chief called for "alternative principles of the world order" to be developed, based on "true equality of all participants in international relations."

Russia is reportedly experiencing a pressing brain drain as a result of its increasing isolation from Western-dominated technological, financial and academic spheres. Moscow's decision to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to fight in Ukraine has also prompted many to flee the country.

RBC reported in April that the number of workers in Russia under the age of 35 fell by 1.33 million people between December 2021 and December 2022. This is comparable to the impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in 2020, which saw 1.34 million young Russians leave the job market.

Naryshkin's remarks align with broader Kremlin efforts to stoke anti-Western attitudes in the so-called "Global South." Decades of Western neo-colonial economic, political, cultural, and military dominance have sown many grievances in less developed nations outside the Euro-Atlantic NATO and European Union blocs.

The Kremlin hopes it can leverage such sentiment against the Western adversaries that have mobilized to contain Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv, meanwhile, is competing with Moscow for support in the Global South, stressing the imperialist nature of the Kremlin's ongoing invasion and urging solidarity.

Russia and its allies have framed Moscow's aggression as a necessary, pre-emptive conflict against NATO and its puppets in Kyiv. The conflict, President Vladimir Putin has claimed, will accelerate the emergence of a "new multipolar world" in which the U.S. and its Western allies have less influence.

Putin is due to speak at the Eastern Economic Forum on Tuesday. At last year's event, the president set development of the country's eastern regions as a "priority goal." Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that the president "will give his assessment and analysis of how far the Far East has progressed in its development in the past year and the past decade."

Peskov said that dialogue with Western rivals "is now pointless because there is no one there who is currently prepared to absorb any kind of argument."

Peskov added: "All things change with time, and we hope that with time the necessary conditions for resuming this dialogue will be created." Newsweek has contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry by email to request comment.