Письмо в редакцию №11

Stalinist-Like Denunciation of My Open Access Book “The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins”

Ivan Katchanovski

«Историческая экспертиза» получила письмо политолога Ивана Качановского (Оттавский университет), автора книги «The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins» (в открытом доступе: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-98724-3). Это письмо – ответ на «коллективное предупреждение» читателям этой книги, которое подписали около 250 учёных, и которое было опубликовано в издании «Украинская правда» (https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2026/04/28/8032087/).

«Историческая экспертиза» открыта к дискуссии и готова предоставить возможность упомянутым в данном письме лицам дать свой ответ. Также мы призываем наших авторов и читателей высказаться, является ли адекватным и этичным приёмом написание «коллективных предупреждений» и последовавшая война «открытых писем» вместо подготовки научных рецензий. Ваши размышление присылайте, пожалуйста, на почту журнала istorexorg@gmail.com

Andreas Umland, Anton Shekhovtsov, and their ilk resort to a Stalinist-like denunciation of my open access book “The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins.” They want not only to censor my book but also to go after my university job, research funding, and subject me to criminal persecution and sanctions in Ukraine because they are incapable of challenging my evidence-based analysis. Instead of following standard academic norms and practices, they resort to a collective denunciation of my book. This is typical of Soviet practices and not of the Western academia. And their denunciation is based on primitive fraud, fakes, and slander. It’s revealing who joined this Stalinist-like denunciation by means of false and fraudulent claims.

For them, politics trumps merit, evidence, and scientific research. Many of them admitted that they did not even read the book. There are those who expressed regret signing the collective denunciation. They said that they did not read my book, trusted Umland’s solicitation and wanted to withdraw their signatures. Like they said in the Soviet Union in collective denunciations of the “Doctor Zhivago” book, “I did not read it. but I condemn it.”

Nearly 250 people from 37 countries, more than half of them scholars, but also many journalists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, bloggers, retirees, and people from various other occupations, signed An Open Letter in Support of Academic Freedom and Ivan Katchanovski. The letter with the list of the signatures was published by the New Paradigm magazine edited by Robert Crews, Professor of History at Stanford University. It is still open for signing by sending to openletter2026@gmail.com your name, position/job title, institutional affiliation, country, and if you prefer that your name is not published and only institutional affiliation and country are listed.

An Open Letter in Support of Academic Freedom and Ivan Katchanovski was signed by many well-known Western and Ukrainian scholars. The large number of signatures over such short time from scholars from different disciplines and people in other occupations from more than three dozen countries shows that impact of my book and my other studies is not limited to the narrow field of East European area studies. This is also another demonstration that the claim that the popularity of my book is covertly engineered by Elon Musk using X is patently false.  

Many scholars, including prominent Western and Ukrainian academics, criticized in various terms on the social media this Umland-initiated collective denunciation of my book. Volodymyr Ishchenko referred to it as ‘neither democratic nor liberal nor properly academic,’ ‘conspiratorial and obscurantist collective denunciation.’ Per Rudling called it ‘Soviet style donos,’ ‘Soviet style denunciation,’ ‘dirty fight.’ Serhiy Kudelia wrote that this is a ‘really bizarre letter laced with ad hominem attacks and conspiratorial thinking’ and represents ‘most typical Soviet style collectivist bashing practices.’ Andrii Baumeister said that this collective letter is ‘denunciation,’ ‘degeneration,’ ‘a loss of human dignity,’ and ‘an ontological abyss.’ Marta Havryshko stated that this is ‘public lynching’ by ‘bullying mob.’

Roland Popp wrote that “this open letter is above all a self-discreditation of the signatories as scientists.” Matthew Blackburn called it ‘‘political denunciation,’ ‘an attempt to ‘rally the ranks” and enforce the “one true” explanation of the war,’ The Umland-initiated collective denunciation was also called ‘KGB-style sabbath’ by Serguey Ehrlich; ‘censorship and the inquisition’ by Monica Dall'Astal, a defamation campaign’ by Jacques Sapir; ‘political pamphlet’ by Dmitry Dubrovsky; ‘neither democratic nor liberal nor properly academic’ by Vladimir Tikhonov; and ‘ad hominem attacks’ by David Carment.

Bruno Drweski branded this open letter ‘antiscientific and anti-academic political neo-McCarthyism.’ Tarik Cyril Amar stated that this is ‘pseudo-academic mobilization to suppress politically unwelcome research.’ Francis Ingledew called it ‘useless and corrupted with agendas.’ Mikhail Nemtsev referred to it ‘character assassination.’ Glenn Diesen termed it ‘campaign of intimidation, smears and censorship.’ Even David Marples, who attacked my initial academic study of the Maidan massacre and equates far-right and oligarchic elements involved in this mass killing with Maidan protesters and Ukraine, called the letter ‘denunciation,’ ‘unfair, unbalanced,’ ‘virtual gang assault.’

Dmitry Dubrovsky and Matthew Blackburn in their article in Times Higher Education called the Umland-initiated collective denunciation “deeply problematic,” and “establishing a regime of truth.” Several prominent journalists used similar terms. Thomas Fazi called it ‘academic mob’s coordinated attack,’ Branko Marcetic stated that this is ‘smear’ by ‘war propagandists.’ Leonid Ragozin branded it ‘a cesspool of pro-war grift,’ while Yulia Latynina wrote that this is ‘real recognition.’ Ilya Ber noted that “the text of the petition in UP is dishonest and shameful,’ ‘literally a blot on the biography and a spoiling of the obituary to sign it’.

My book was published by a major Western academic press following very positive peer-review by two experts. It was endorsed by four leading American, British, and Ukrainian experts: Dr. Volodymyr Ishchenko, research associate at the Institute for East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin; Dr Anatol Lieven, Director, Eurasia Program, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft; Richard Sakwa, Emeritus Professor of Russian and European Politics, University of Kent, UK; and Jack F. Matlock, Jr, Duke University and the former US ambassador to the Soviet Union. Jack Matlock called this book “absolutely essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand why the war in Ukraine occurred and why it is vital for Ukraine to agree to a negotiated settlement.”

In her review of my open access book, Mary Dejevsky, a noted British journalist, wrote that “The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins is not just another study of the conflict. It is a tour de force of advocacy—for truth—a feat of evidence gathering and probably the closest that anyone has come to disentangling the host of conflicting narratives that have so characterised this war.”

Umland’s initial draft of the denunciation letter, which he wrote was formulated with the involvement of Shekhovtsov, was sent to a large number of his handpicked recipients on January 1, 2026, but the absolute majority of them did not sign it. They included prominent scholars. Some other prominent Western and Ukrainian scholars wrote on the social media that they refused to sign the letter after Umland contacted them with such request. He spent more than 4 months on personally soliciting signatures via email and added the denunciation of Elon Musk, whose Starlink has been critical for communication of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the Russia-Ukraine war. I was forwarded copies of the different drafts of the Umland’s denunciation and his solicitation emails.

In essence, overnight experts, who do not specialize in researching conflicts in Ukraine, did not publish books on the Russia-Ukraine war, and even did not read my book use fraud and fakes for political denunciation of a Ukrainian Canadian scholar, who does all this, and wrote such a book. They try to impose their partisan views of this war and its origins on the academia and beyond, and to dictate which books about this war to publish and read, and which funding to get.

Umland and co in their denunciation deliberately misrepresented findings of my book which clearly states:

The analysis shows that the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, represented the extreme escalation by Russia of the conflicts with Ukraine and the West, the civil war in Donbas, the annexation of Crimea, and the Western-backed violent and illegal overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine by the oligarchic and far-right alliance by means of the Maidan massacre and assassination attempts during Euromaidan. NATO accession of Ukraine was a major factor, but it, like the role of the far right, was inflated by Russia. Russian imperialism was also significant but secondary factor. Ukraine is not a democracy.

My book shows that narratives propagated by the Russian governments and media concerning the Russia-Ukraine war and its origins are false to various extent. It shows that contrary to Russian government and media propaganda the Russian invasion in 2022 was illegal under the international law, that this is a war and not a special military operation in Ukraine. My book also shows that there is no genocide of ethnic Russians/ Russian speakers in Donbas, that the war crimes are primarily committed by the Russian forces, that there killings in Bucha and the MH17 shotdown were not false flags by the Ukrainian forces/Western-organized provocation, that there is no Nazi or neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine, there was no ‘fascist coup” in Ukraine in 2014, that Ukraine is not a US colony, that there were covert Russian military interventions in Donbas in August 2014 and January 2015, and that the Russian annexation in Crimea is illegal.

My book specifically shows that the Russian government and propaganda justification of the war by threats of imminent NATO accession of Ukraine and US missiles deployment, the Nazi regime in Ukraine, and a preventative special military operation to stop Ukrainian attack in Donbas, and humanitarian intervention to stop genocide in Donbas are false. It shows that Russian imperialism was a major factor, in particular, in the annexation of Crimea, Donbas, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, but that there is no evidence that Russia wants to occupy and annex entire Ukraine.

The Russian role in the war origins is not confined to Russian imperialism. My book examines many factors of the war origins. Denying role of other factors and claiming that Russian imperialism was the only factor of the war origins and any scholar who does not accept it and deviates from it echoes Russian propaganda has nothing to do with science and academic research. This is an attempt to force scholars to follow not evidence but propaganda, narrative control, and political agenda. My book does not parrot the Ukrainian and Western propaganda and shows that the narratives propagated by the Ukrainian and Western governments and media also concerning the Russia-Ukraine war, its origins, and preceding conflicts are false to various extent.

Various books in the West focused on the role of the West in the Russia-Ukraine war origins. They include Stephen Kinzer’s “Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine. He is Senior Fellow at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University and the former The New York Times correspondent. Such arguments are also made by the University of Cambridge Emeritus Professor Jonathan Haslam in his book “Hubris: The American origins of Russia’s war against Ukraine” that was published in 2025 by Harvard University Press“ and “The Russo-Ukrainian War: Follies of Empire” by Richard Sakwa, a leading British expert om post-Soviet politics. Such books also include Benjamin Abelow’s “How the West brought war to Ukraine: Understanding how U.S. and NATO policies led to crisis, war, and the risk of nuclear catastrophe;” “Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine” by Scott Horton and “Their Blood, Our Bullets: The Hidden Story of the US–Russia War for Ukraine” by Aaron Maté.

The collective denunciation offers only one specific example challenging my book’s specific findings, namely that the Russian annexation of Crimea in February-March 2014 was “mainly a disproportionate escalation of the conflict as a reaction to the Western-backed violent overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine during Euromaidan.” But my book, along with various other evidence, specifically quotes US President Barak Obama who stated in his CNN interview in 2015 that “Mr. Putin made this decision around Crimea and Ukraine, not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off balance by the protests in the Maidan, and Yanukovych then fleeing after we’d brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine.”

My book chapter about the war origins quotes statement by Donald Trump in the All-In Podcast with David Sacks that the NATO accession of Ukraine provoked the Russia-Ukraine war. It quotes NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that Putin “went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.” It quotes Davyd Arakhamia, the head of the Ukrainian delegation at the peace talks that the Ukrainian neutrality was main Russian condition for the peace deal and that the war could have ended in spring of 2022 if Ukraine had agreed to neutrality.

My book also quotes Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission President, that the Maidan massacre was crucial in the origins of the Russia-Ukraine war. She stated that “this conflict began already ten years ago,” “when peaceful protesters, just waving the European flags in Maidan Square, were shot dead by snipers.” Such major Western media as the New York Times and CBC also linked Euromaidan, and specifically, the Maidan massacre with the roots of the Russia-Ukraine war.

In essence, the collective denunciation letter falsely accuses not only the book by a Ukrainian and Canadian scholar but also Obama, Trump, NATO and EU chiefs, the head of Zelensky faction in the parliament and the head the Ukrainian delegation at peace talks, the New York Times, CBC, and many others of echoing Russian propaganda on the war origins. They also falsely accuse Elon Musk and David Sacks, two leading American entrepreneurs and members of the US administration, of echoing Russian propaganda because they supported the GoFundMe crowdfunding to make my book open access, i.e. freely accessible.

Umland and other denouncers know very well that I have nearly 50,000 followers on X (former Twitter), over 9,000 followers on Facebook, about 10,000 followers on Academia and ResearchGate, and more than 2,000 subscribers on YouTube and nearly 1,000 on Substack since they were themselves among my followers on X, Facebook, and Academia. Just my X post announcing the publication of my open access book “The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins” by Palgrave Macmillan and linking to its text has over 240,000 views. It alone along with over 700 reposts account for almost one third of posts by X users about this book on Almetric. All this information is openly displayed, and the Umland and other denouncers knew about this X post since they quote two replies to this X post which they cherrypicked out of over 100 replies. But they instead invented while others supported a primitive and false conspiracy theory of Elon Musk somehow covertly engineering on X views and downloads of my book about the war in Ukraine. Umland and his ilk continued to peddle their conspiracy theory even after I debunked it with clear evidence.

Umland repeatedly peddled lies that Elon Musk covertly engineers very high number of views and downloads of my open access book “The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins.” Partly due to the Streisand effect, there are over 135,000 new unique accessions of my book just on the publisher website since the false claim in his Stalinist-like denunciation that 248,000 accessions of my book since its publication on September 30, 2025, were due to some kind of covert actions on X by Elon Musk. There has been a clear jump in accessions of my book, which now reached over 383,000 unique views and downloads just on the Springer Nature website, since the Umland-engineered Stalinist-like denunciation and censorship campaign which is based on such egregious fraud. It's revealing who backed this primitive fraud.

It is hardly coincidence that the denouncers include members and descendants of the Soviet and Communist elite. A granddaughter of Georgiy Shevel, the head of Komsomol of Soviet Ukraine (The Leninist Communist League of Youth of Ukraine) under Stalin and the head of the Department of propaganda and agitation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, admitted on the social media that she helped to revise the collective letter and used current and former members of the board of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies to collect signatures. Descendants and members of the Communist elite of Soviet Ukraine headed the American and Canadian Associations of the Ukrainian Studies.  

Umland, Shekhovtsov, and their ilk proclaim in their denunciation the only true explanation of the war origins and its nature and denounce any deviation from the party line by scholars or anyone else as “apology for Russia's war on Ukraine” notwithstanding of the evidence. They demand to parrot propaganda about the war origins, about Russian genocide in Ukraine, about marginal far-right in Ukraine, and about Ukraine winning the war with Russia, about this war ongoing since 2014, about Ukraine as democracy, etc. They present support of the unconstitutional violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government by means of the false-flag Maidan massacre, civil war in Donbas, and the proxy in Ukraine with supporting Ukraine and call this pro-Ukrainian. They equate Ukrainian politicians, parties, and organizations which perpetrated this with Ukraine.

They whitewash the role of the far-right, the Maidan politicians, Zelensky, and the Western governments in the origins of the war and in blocking prevention of this war and its peaceful resolution, in spite of overwhelming evidence, including admissions the far-right leaders and activists, the Maidan politicians, Zelensky’s government officials, and the Western government leaders. This collective denunciation has nothing to do with science but is political denunciation, an attack, and an attempt to impose political narratives, propaganda, and censorship in academic research of the Russia-Ukraine war.

They falsely link me and my book to the Russian media simply because a US-educated German professor at a Turkish university, who specializes in Ukrainian history, was one of those who congratulated me on X with its publication. I do not give any Russian state media interviews during the war. There were no Russian media publications citing my book “The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins.” I publicly condemned the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine from the start in my Ukrainian and Western media interviews and on the social media.

My book is based not on Russian, Ukrainian, or Western propaganda but on thousands of primary and secondary Ukrainian and Western sources. In contrast to me, Umland, Shekhovtsov, and those who signed their denunciation with just a few exceptions did not publish books about the Russia-Ukraine war. Einstein reportedly said in response to the publication of the German book “100 Authors Against Einstein”: “Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough” to disprove his theory of relativity. Scientific truth is based on verifiable evidence and not on political denunciations and numbers of those who denounce it.

Ukrainska pravda propagates such defamation, denunciations, and fake news concerning me and my nooks. It refused to publish An Open Letter in Support of Academic Freedom and Ivan Katchanovski. I helped to publicize in the US media kidnapping and killing of the Ukrainska pravda founder by helping an American journalist to travel to Ukraine and cover this story. But it now became a Ukrainian version of Soviet Pravda.

The collective denunciation letter propagates primitive fakes about popularity of my book, because it reached 248,000 views and downloads on the publisher website 6 months since its official publication. It falsely claims that Musk and Sacks covertly promote its views and downloads on X. Like their Soviet counterparts denouncing books, which they did not read, they did not even read the book’s preface or read it but propagated deliberate fraud, nevertheless. My book clearly states:

My academic publications, which primarily concern conflicts and politics in Ukraine, have reached over 2,000,000 reads and downloads just on my academic websites and the publisher sites. My research-based Twitter and Facebook posts and YouTube videos reached over 125,000,000 views. I am one of the most cited political scientists who specialize primarily in politics and conflicts in Ukraine. My research-based publications, interviews, and comments appeared in more than 4,000 media reports in more than 80 countries. They include such major Western media as ABC News, BBC Ukrainian, Associated Press, Canadian Press, CBC News, CTV News, France 24, France Télévisions, Daily Beast, Euronews, Global TV, Globe and Mail, Guardian, Hill TV, La Presse, Le Figaro, La Razón, La Stampa, National Post, Reuters, Sky News Australia, Times Higher Education, Vice, and Washington Post.

My paper, “The “Snipers’ Massacre” on the Maidan in Ukraine,” is the most downloaded paper among almost 20,000 papers on subject of ‘Ukraine’ in Academia.edu, a major registered-based research depository and site for scholars. I published its greatly expanded and updated versions and parts in peer-reviewed journals and books. These open access studies have over 1,000,000 views and downloads. Four my papers are among the top dozen most downloaded papers on subject of ‘Ukraine’ on Academia.edu. My papers and profile are in the top 0.1% views on Academia.edu for over a decade. Umland, Shekhovtsov, and their ilk are well aware about impact of my previous studies, but they deliberately propagate fakes.

My articles “The hidden origin of the escalating Ukraine-Russia conflict” and “Buried trial verdict confirms false-flag Maidan massacre in Ukraine” were the most read articles in the Canadian Dimension magazine, respectively, in 2022 and 2024. Over 200 video and audio recordings of my podcast interviews about the Russia-Ukraine war, the Maidan massacre, and other topics concerning the conflicts and politics in Ukraine, which I research, have millions of combined views on YouTube and other social media platforms. My studies have over 2,200 Google Scholar citations and the H-index of 26, which are one of the highest among political scientists, who specialize primarily in politics and conflicts in Ukraine.

It's revealing that the Umland-led denunciation deliberately omits my open access book “The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: The Mass Killing that Changed the World” and its over 508,000 unique views and downloads just on the publisher website. The denunciation letter even falsely claims that Yanukovych was not removed from presidency during Euromaidan. Colleagues said that Umland told them privately even before the war that he was convinced by my studies of the Maidan massacre. His 2018 Facebook post suggests this as well: “Worrying collection of testimonies collected by Ivan Katchanovski. Given the ambivalence of this evidence, the snipers massacre demands a proper investigation and extensive report. That such a document does not yet exist is, unfortunately, a worrying sign by itself.”

But instead of admitting this publicly he and his ilk resort to Stalinist-like denunciation of me and my other book “The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins: From the Maidan to the Ukraine War” and false claims that its views and downloads were covertly engineered by Elon Musk. The fact that the letter omitted that my Maidan massacre book got twice as many accessions as my denounced Russia-Ukraine war book is another evidence that the claims by Umland and his ilk that hight views and downloads of the former are covertly engineered by Musk are false and represent deliberate fraud. 

My Maidan massacre book, 4 peer-reviewed journal articles and 2 book chapters, including in a chapter in “The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins,” about this massacre are based on testimonies by the absolute majority of wounded Maidan protesters and about 100 witnesses for the Maidan massacre trial and investigation in Ukraine, testimonies by over 500 other witnesses and 14 self-admitted Maidan snipers, over 20 videos of such snipers, ballistic and medical examinations by Ukrainian government forensic experts, bullet hole locations, and synchronized videos of the massacre. Major findings of my studies are de facto corroborated by the text of two verdicts of Ukrainian courts. The Ukrainian media and the mainstream Western media, with a few notable exceptions, did not report such evidence even though it is available online in my academic and social media publications video appendixes of my book and peer-reviewed journal articles.

Unreported parts of the nearly 1,000,000-word Maidan massacre trial verdict that was issued by the Sviatoshyn District Court in Kyiv in October 2023 following a seven-year long trial of 5 Berkut police officers confirmed findings of the studies that many Maidan activists were killed and wounded and BBC and ARD TV journalists were shot at not by Berkut or other law enforcement but by snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled locations. It also confirmed findings of my studies that this hotel was “activists-controlled” and that there was a far-right-linked special armed Maidan company in this hotel and the Music Conservatory. The verdict stated there were no Russian snipers involved in the massacre and that there were no massacre orders by Yanukovych, his government, the SBU, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The trial verdict stated that Maidan then was not a peaceful protest but “a rebellion” which involved the massacre of the Berkut and other police members.

The declassified text of the Ukrainian court verdict in March 2025 confirmed the false flag shooting of Maidan activists in Khmelnytskyi during the Maidan massacre. Forensic expert examination of videos, forensic ballistic and medical examinations, on-site investigative experiments by government forensic experts, witness testimonies, and investigations by the SBU the Ukrainian Military Prosecutor Office showed that gunshots made from the SBU veranda, which was occupied by Maidan activists, killed elderly female Maidan protester and wounded other Maidan protesters. The verdict acquitted the ex-head of Khmelnytskyi SBU and the SBU Alfa officer for shooting of these Maidan activists because of the lack of evidence of their involvement in the shooting and because of such evidence of the false flag shooting.

Oleh Tatarov, who is now the deputy head of the Zelensky Office of President of Ukraine, told Western ambassadors on February 19, 2014 that Maidan protesters were shot in the back by other Maidan activists and that the police did not shoot them. Tatarov, who then was the deputy head of the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was the first to publicly refer to the false flag Maidan massacre one day before 49 Maidan activists and 4 police officers were killed in the false flag mass killing.

Calling the false flag Maidan massacre and testimonies by the Maidan protesters and other Ukrainian witnesses, and verdicts of the Ukrainian courts Russian narrative or Russian propaganda is Orwellian propaganda and whitewashing of mass murderers.

Open-access publication of my book was funded by open access publication grant from the University of Ottawa and over 360 GoFundMe contributors. Contrary to the Umland-led collective denunciation, Elon Musk did not fund my book but helped on Twitter/X to unblock my GoFundMe for this book. I publicly thanked Elon Musk, David Sacks, and all contributors, whom Umland, Shekhovtsov and their ilk slander. It is great that that leading US Silicon Valley entrepreneurs openly supported crowdfunding for an academic book and opposed the attempt of political censorship of academic research. 

Umland falsely calls Elon Musk and David Sacks “techno-fascists” and now states that “the purpose of the ‘campaign is to counteract interventions by super-rich techno-authoritarians with connections to the White House in Eastern European studies.” He and other denouncers, who came from the said institutions, are perfectly fine with Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch wanted by the US on bribing charges, giving $6.7 million to establish and finance Cambridge Ukrainian Studies; Pinchuk financing Ukrainian history initiative, and over 1,000,000 endowments by SS Galicia Division veterans for the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Umland himself works in Western-governments funded think tanks and he previously worked in a Ukrainian thinktank which was cofounded by one of the organizers of the neo-Nazi-led Azov battalion.!

Andreas Umland in recommendation section of his article in Ukrainska pravda, approvingly quoted a call for total mobilization in Ukraine by a neo-Nazi, who called Hitler “an outstanding person,” Umland called videos of forced mobilization in Ukraine Russian propaganda. He propagated the now discredited conspiracy theory about the false flag Nord Stream bombing by Russia. Anton Shekhovtsov headed the Dugin's far-right organization in Crimea and led its protest against NATO in Ukraine. Umland, Shekhovtsov, and their ilk try to force scholars to parrot such propaganda and propagate politically convenient fake narratives that they propagate themselves.

Umland and Shekhovtsov resorted to such denunciation in retaliation of references in my book to their partisan whitewashing of neo-Nazis in Ukraine:

Some researchers, especially from partisan think tanks, regarded the role of the far-right organizations and formations in Ukraine in Euromaidan, and the war in Donbas as insignificant or marginal. They focused on numerical strength of far-right organizations and electoral support for the far-right parties and ignored or denied the far-right involvement in political violence, such as the Odesa massacre and the civil war in Donbas. They claimed that the presence of Russian-speakers in the Azov regiment and other neo-Nazi-led armed formations is evidence of their relative tolerance and asserted that the Azov regiment moderated by abandoning its far-right roots (see, for example, Umland, 2019, 2020)... Anton Shekhovtsov compared the mass killing of people by a fire in the Trade Union building in Odesa to his killing of Colorado potato beetles by collecting them in a box and then burning them” (Anton, 2014). He was earlier a leader of the Crimean branch of the pro-Russian far-right Eurasian Youth Union led by Aleksandr Dugin (AntiNATOvskii, 2006).

Umland, Shekhovtov and their ilk, also initiated during the Maidan a collective petition telling the researchers and the media to keep salient about the far-right, claimed that the far-right violence was a Yanukovych and Russian provocation, and labelled a far-right Bratstvo (Brotherhood) leader, who participated in the attack of the presidential administration, a Russia-linked provocateur. This was another fraud since Brotherhood under same leader formed their own battalion during the war in Donbas and a unit in the military intelligence of Ukraine during the Russia-Ukraine war. Now they tell in their-initiated open letter to ignore the Maidan massacre with far-right involvement and their role in the origins of the Russia-Ukraine war by warning not to read about this, in particular in my book. 

In the Western academia, the tenure system is supposed to be based om merit and provide protection and academic freedom to conduct research on politically charged topics without fear of losing a university position. But my recently published study of over 500 graduates of doctoral programs in economics, education, political science, and sociology in the American, British, and Canadian universities from East Central Europe and post-Soviet countries with specialisation in study of these countries shows that politics trumps academic merit in academic placement in Western universities:

In political science, 22% of male PhD recipients from Ukraine, compared to 62% of their female counterparts, and 55% Romanian, 47% Polish, and 27% Russian men, obtained permanent faculty positions. There were only two Ukrainian men, who were born in Ukraine, and who were USBCgrads [US, British, and Canadian universities graduates], among permanent faculty in Western universities. Two out of four of these male Ukrainian professors no longer hold their tenure-track or tenured jobs. And only one of them wrote a dissertation on Ukraine…. It appears that, since 2009, no other male USBCgrads in political science, who wrote dissertations on Ukraine, got tenure-track or other permanent jobs in Western universities. The lack of tenure means less protection for Ukrainian academics to express views that are contrary to Western narratives about the war, and less funding and resources to conduct research regarding the war and other conflicts and political issues in Ukraine.

The collective denunciation corroborates my study findings about “the extant lack of male Ukrainian political scientists in tenured positions in Western universities, that is, during the Russia-Ukraine war when detailed knowledge about Ukraine presumably is at a premium,” “discrimination against, and the deliberate exclusion” “as part of the wider manufacture of consent in the Western countries supporting the proxy war in Ukraine” in spite of “declarations regarding the importance of ‘Ukrainian voices’ and the ‘decolonization’ of post-communist studies in the West.” It demonstrates “bias and the politization of the study of East Central Europe and post-Soviet countries in Western academia.”

My 7 scholarly books, 22 peer-reviewed journal articles, and 14 book chapters include 3 books, 4 peer-reviewed articles, and 1 book chapter published or in press in the last 3 years. This is a few times more than required for getting a tenure in political science in the absolute majority of universities in Canada and the US in twice as long time period. But the denouncers smear my academic record and misrepresent my academic background and my university position at the University of Ottawa.

I was Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Politics at the State University of New York at Potsdam, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and Kluge Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. I received his Ph.D. from the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University under the direction of Seymour Martin Lipset. Lipset, who was one of the most cited political scientists and political sociologists in history, chaired my PhD dissertation on regional political divisions and separatist conflicts in post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova. He invited me to be his research assistant, and I became his book co-author. Lipset called me one of his best students, including from Harvard and Stanford where he held named chairs.

Lipset told me that if research findings match political views of a researcher, they need to be thrown in garbage. In my book and other scholarly studies, I follow such approach which was also advanced by Max Weber and many other top social scientists. In contrast, the denouncers not only openly state that they do not follow the principle of academic neutrality in the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, but they also try to impose such political partisanship on anyone researching this conflict.

The denunciation of me and my scholarly book by Umland, Shekhovtsov, and their ilk is not only an open attack on academic freedom but also an attempt to censor my book and subject me to criminal prosecution or sanctions for my academic research. There were many such cases of political persecution in Ukraine.

My house, land, and all other property in my native Western Ukraine were illegally seized in retaliation of my scholarly studies of the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. I was blacklisted on the Ukrainian government-linked Myrotvorets hit list for “crimes” of showing involvement of radical nationalists and neo-Nazis in this massacre of the Maidan protesters and the police and for exposing the SS Galicia division veteran, who was given standing ovations in the Canadian parliament by the Canadian government, parliament, Zelensky, and his delegation. The Ukrainian government agency, whose First Deputy Head is the leader of the OUN, which collaborated with Nazi Germany and was involved in organizing the SS Galicia Division, banned my book and threatened me with criminal prosecution for it.

Their Stalinist-era predecessors published in a Ukrainian newspaper Kommunist a similar denunciation of Mykhailo Krawtchouk, my relative, and his mathematical publications, during the Stalin’s Great Terror. Two volumes of this mathematical book were translated and used by the American inventor of the electronic digital computer in inventing his computer, which was designed to speed up solutions of mathematical equations by methods that the noted Ukrainian mathematician developed. He was then arrested on false charges and perished in Stalin’s GULAG. Now, contemporary successors of the Soviet-era denouncers use this invention for similar political denunciation of me and my academic book.

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