Upset about Russia’s ‘brain drain,’ Putin puts foreign academic foundations on alert

Vladimir Putin has asked Russia’s Council for Science and Education to pay special attention to foreign foundations that sponsor programs that take Russian students abroad for education in foreign universities.

“These so-called foreign foundations, operating in schools, are networked organizations just ‘rummaging’ through Russian schools, under the guise of supporting the talented youth. In fact, they work just like a vacuum cleaner. They take our potential university students right out of school, ‘cultivate’ them with a grant, and take them away,” Putin said.

On May 26, 2015, Putin made a similar statement, complaining that too few Russian students return home after studying abroad on foreign grants. “This is something we need to think about,” Putin said at the time.

As far back as 2011, Putin has publicly voiced his concerns about Russia’s “brain drain,” saying, “People with good training—valuable specialists—are an intellectual product. Figuratively speaking, these people are a commodity. They flow wherever the best conditions for the utilization of their skills. And [specialists] are also leaving Europe to go to America,” Putin said four years ago.

In March 2015, Vladimir Fortov, the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, complained that Russian academics have been leaving the country more often in the past year and a half for jobs abroad, where salaries are higher.

In October 2014, Russia canceled the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX), a high school exchange program. In its 23-year history, FLEX helped more than 23,000 Russian teenagers study in the United States.