Chubais organized a new project in Israel: what will he do and what does foreign agents have to do with it?

The ex-head of Rusnano and former special representative of the Russian President Anatoly Chubais became the “organizer of a group of sponsors” of the Center for Russian Studies (CRS) that opened in Israel. This was announced on Thursday, May 2, by the press service of Tel Aviv University, where the center is located.

The center will study the modern history of Russia after 1991.

Experts recognized in Russia as foreign agents will take part in the project.

The educational institution added that “the stated task of the CRS is to approach the possibility of ‘understanding Russia’ in its new form in a purely academic sense.”

“A comprehensive study of the possible future of Russia based on the events of the recent past” at the Center will be carried out by sociologist and former dean of the Shaninka Faculty of Social Sciences Viktor Vakhshtain and political scientist Alexander Baunov (recognized by the Russian Ministry of Justice as foreign agents), economist and deputy editor-in-chief of the Kommersant newspaper Dmitry Butrin, literary critic and publicist Alexander Arkhangelsky.

Chubais explained the creation of the CRS as an attempt to understand the modern history of Russia

Anatoly Chubais himself in a comment to journalist Alexey Venediktov (recognized by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as a foreign agent) explained the creation of the CRS as an attempt to re-understand the modern history of Russia.

For the second time in the last 35 years, Russia is changing the vector of its development to the opposite. It is very important now to rise above emotions, personal destinies, political preferences and try to re-understand our recent history so as not to repeat the mistakes we have made.

Anatoly Chubaisex-head of Rusnano

He added that the initiative will provide “lessons that will be truly relevant in the future.”

Chubais’s funding of the Center for Russian Studies was previously reported

Back in February, sources from the Israeli publication Haaretz reported that Chubais was among the sponsors of the new center for Russian studies at Tel Aviv University.

The center will use the allocated funds to carry out academic activities, but the university refused to disclose the size of the contribution of the ex-head of Rusnano. The publication emphasizes that reports of Chubais’s contacts with Israeli universities about the creation of a new center for Russian studies began to appear several months after he resigned as the special representative of the president for sustainable development and left Russia in early 2022.

Earlier, Putin spoke about Chubais’s departure

Last September, Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking about Anatoly Chubais, said that “he ran away.”

The fact that Anatoly Borisovich is hiding there, I generally [не понимаю]. They showed me a photograph from the Internet, where he is no longer Anatoly Borisovich Chubais, but Moisha Izrailevich. Why is he doing this? I don’t understand

Vladimir PutinPresident of Russia

On May 2, commenting on reports about the creation of the Center for Russian Studies, the former head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, called Chubais “a fierce enemy who hates Russia.”