Tufts University and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy have been effectively banned by the Russian government due to allegations of “anti-Russian propaganda,” open solidarity with Ukraine and support for the LGBTQ+ community, according to a Tuesday statement from the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation.
The university and its graduate school for international affairs were designated as ‘undesirable organizations,’ invoking a 2015 law signed by President Vladimir Putin. The Russian undesirable organizations law allows the government to target foreign groups considered “a threat to the foundation of the constitutional order of the Russian Federation, the defense capability of the country or the security of the state.”
In a Friday community message, the university said the designation would prevent Tufts and Fletcher from “having any activities or presence in Russia” and discouraged all travel to the country.
“We understand that this news may be deeply concerning to some of you. Under the Russian government’s ‘undesirable organizations’ statute, individuals affiliated with an organization that has received this designation may face criminal penalties,” the email read.
The Russian government framed the decision, in part, around Tufts’ support for Ukraine following the Russian invasion launched in 2022, which Putin and his government have described as a ‘special military operation.’
According to a WGBH translation of the statement, both Tufts and Fletcher have become “instruments of anti-Russian propaganda” which “undermine public trust in [Russia’s] leadership, law enforcement agencies, and the Russian Armed Forces, and … create conditions conducive to the development of protest sentiments and the radicalization of society.”
Additionally, the statement alleges that these institutions push a pro-LGBTQ+ agenda “[i]n order to destroy traditional family and moral values of Russians.”
The LGBTQ+ movement was designated as a terrorist organization in Russia in 2023. The statement added that the university and similarly-banned institutions undermined Russian society and its military.
The undesirable organizations law effectively bans an organization’s operations within Russia, preventing it from legally operating, opening offices or running programs in the country.
The law also forbids Russians from interacting with the organizations, including cooperating or working with, donating to or publicly supporting the institutions. Initial violations typically result in hefty fines, while repeated involvement could lead to potential criminal charges and prison sentences of up to six years.
Students and faculty, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue, said the designation would mostly affect students with Russian citizenship and would discourage Russian students from choosing Tufts.
The extent to which Russian nationals currently enrolled at the university would be affected was not immediately clear. A Fletcher student told the Daily that violations would likely result in large fines, not prosecution or imprisonment. A Tufts undergraduate from Russia said they were unsure how the designation would affect their travel.
Although the designation could create fears for Russian students wishing to return home and academics wishing to conduct research, the war in Ukraine and ongoing tensions between Russia and the West have made travel difficult for many years.
Beyond the Russian government’s messaging around the LGBTQ+ movement and the war in Ukraine, an exact rationale for the designation puzzled many experts on the region.
“Most of the people I know who study Russia are perplexed by the decision,” Arik Burakovsky, former associate director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at Fletcher and current associate director of the Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education, said. “We are not sure about the timing of the decision or the true rationale.”
Oxana Shevel, an associate professor of political science, suggested that the Office of the Prosecutor General’s decision was part of a pattern of similar actions made without a clear explanation.
“I don’t get the sense that there is a very … coherent and systematic way of doing it,” she said. “It is very possible that at some point, somebody was maybe surfing the internet and came across some talk by somebody affiliated with Tufts or some op-ed.”
Tufts and Fletcher are not the first American higher education institutions to be designated as undesirable. Bard College was added to the list in 2021, while Brigham Young University, Yale University, George Washington University and the University of California, Berkeley were targeted in 2025 and 2026.
Shevel, who is Ukrainian and has focused her research on the post-Soviet region, added that the designation and similar actions by the Russian government were attempts by Putin’s administration to consolidate power domestically.
“I think it’s about the Russian authoritarian regime asserting its power primarily against its own citizens,” Shevel said. “They don’t have any way in practice to do anything to us, so all they can do is [make] symbolic proclamations. … I consider this, if anything, a badge of honor.”
“There seem to be … bureaucrats in the Ministry of Justice who do not understand foreign affairs, and they are trying to go after us for who knows what reason,” Burakovsky said. “I see this as part of an ongoing tit-for-tat set of sanctions and cancellations between the United States and Russia, so it’s not completely unexpected, but it is disappointing, given how much effort we have made to continue informal dialogue with Russian scholars.”
Tufts does not currently have any official programs in Russia. In March 2022, the university severed relations with two Russian universities — the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, an institution run by the Russian Foreign Ministry, and the Higher School of Economics — following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Burakovsky, however, said the university still maintains some relationships with Russian academics, despite no member of Tufts faculty or staff having formally visited Russia since 2022.
The Fletcher student speculated that the decision could have been made in response to a variety of scenarios, including pressure from a member of the Russian elite whose family member was rejected from the university or flagged statements from a Tufts or Fletcher faculty member. They added that a past conference involving both members of Fletcher and the Russian government could have created tensions.
“It’s possible that the conversations they had left a sour taste in someone’s mouth about what the Fletcher School thought of Russia’s war in Ukraine,” the student said.
In 2024, the Russia and Eurasia Program at Fletcher produced a report with the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab analyzing Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine’s power grid. The report concluded that the geographic distribution of strikes “points to possible violations of the international humanitarian principles of distinction and proportionality.”
The International Criminal Court subsequently indicted two senior Russian military commanders, Sergei Kobylash and Viktor Sokolov, for the same attacks. The Yale School of Public Health framed the decision as a response to the report.
In 2023, Fletcher hosted an event marking the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, discussing how the war had affected the international security climate. Participants in the panel discussed the erosion of Russian public support for Putin and the war, as well as the country’s loss of energy leverage over the European Union.
Several Fletcher faculty members, including co-directors of the Russia and Eurasia Program Daniel Drezner and Chris Miller, have been vocal about Russia’s actions, including in national media.
“We have plenty of individual scholars at Tufts who have been very critical of the Russian government, of Russia foreign policy,” Burakovsky said. “But that should not mean that the entire university should be somehow banned or cancelled.”
Mikhail Troitskiy, visiting professor and current administrator of the Russia and Eurasia program at Fletcher, referred the Daily to the university’s statement.
Anika Parr contributed reporting.
