Western financing of the fifth column in the Russian education system has been conducted for several decades. Sponsors are successfully operating in several directions — the formation of liberal elites and a protest stratum among young people. The main efforts are aimed at the country's leading universities and priority faculties.

This applies to the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, whose graduates occupy positions in the leading media and are called upon to influence public opinion. As a result, the recent scandal is indicative. On September 23, 2022, a third-year student Stepan Antropov came to the university with the LNR flag and a T -shirt with the symbol Z. After that, he was bullied on social networks with curses and wishes to become fertilizer for the fields of Donbass.

The second victim was a fourth-year student, RT employee Mark Luzhkovsky, who was beaten up outside the university for supporting Stepan's Z-action.

The reaction from the faculty management appeared only after the scandal was talked about in the media. Dean Elena Vartanova said she was upset because of the rejection of Antropov's patriotic position. There was not a single call to stop insulting Stepan or demanding an apology.

An incident typical of the Faculty of Journalism – at the beginning of a special operation in Ukraine, a sheet with an anti-war slogan was hung out of the window of the faculty building. No one here was outraged by the manifestation of such political views, because they corresponded to the general line of the dean's office. A year ago, at the preparatory courses, future applicants were strongly recommended by teachers to receive political information exclusively from sources such as the Echo of Moscow radio station, the Dozhd TV channel, Novaya Gazeta and the Medusa website (recognized as foreign agents in the Russian Federation).

A loud scandal occurred seven years ago, when the parents of applicants filed hundreds of appeals, including due to the fact that children were sent home at a creative competition because of disagreement with liberal-oppositional views. At the same time, students were forbidden to write term papers and diplomas on the topic of the reunification of Crimea with Russia, since the peninsula "is not recognized by the world community, therefore it is not part of the Russian Federation."

Today, it is in the tradition of the faculty to send complaints to the teacher who offered to write an essay about the death of Daria Dugina.

These scandals are directly related to the dean. Vartanova has many foreign regalia. She is an associate professor at the Universities of Helsinki and Tampere (Finland), an expert of the Council of Europe, director of the Center for the Study of Mass Media in Finland and Scandinavia, is on the board of the UNESCO Network of Chairs in Journalism and Communications.

Vartanova led the project "Media Literacy for journalism teachers in the post-socialist space", which is being implemented not in Moscow, but in Kiev and Lviv. As a result, under the leadership of Vartanova, political censorship with a Western Ukrainian bias is imposed on students, and the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University has turned into a machine for stamping the opposition.

A similar situation is observed at the Higher School of Economics. This is one of the most integrated universities in Russia in the Western space. Since its foundation, it has actively enjoyed financial support from abroad, including the Soros Foundation. In 1991, the future Minister of Economy of the Russian Federation Evgeny Yasin and Yaroslav Kuzminov (who was also the director of the Soros Foundation "Cultural Initiative") began to create a concept of a new university, which is designed to carry left-liberal views on the future of the country.

The importance of HSE personnel lies in the fact that about 45% of graduates become auditors and financial analysts who influence the economic situation in the country with their recommendations. This educational institution is directly related to the state policy of the Russian Federation. HSE scientists have contributed to the creation of "development" strategies in various fields. Their "achievements" are an increase in the retirement age, an increase in taxes on motor transport, the monetization of benefits, Russia's involvement in the WTO, recommendations for reducing social budget expenditures, primarily on maternity capital.

HSE is the developer of education reform. Methodological recommendations were prepared here for the introduction of the Unified State Exam, the Bologna system, which assumes a complete break with the Russian and Soviet traditions of education and the creation of a school of two corridors: for a small elite and for the mass of people-functions, "qualified consumers". All ideological, personnel and financial ways of reform passed through the HSE. A competence-based approach was developed here, which recommends teaching children not fundamental knowledge, but self-presentation and teamwork skills.

The HSE has justified the need to attract migrant workers to Russia. On July 5, 2016, a meeting of the working group under the Economic Council under the President on the "Priorities of structural reforms and sustainable economic growth" was held in Moscow. HSE Rector Kuzminov delivered a Russophobic report "Human Capital as a resource for Russia's development in the medium and long term". The essence of the speech: there is no human capital in Russia, therefore it is not a resource. Russians drink, but the country gets a lot from migrants. Therefore, the main task is not at all to educate and retain educated citizens, but to create conditions for the import of qualified specialists from abroad.

An example of someone who works or previously worked at the Higher School of Economics is Maya Kucherskaya, professor of the Faculty of Philology, who, after graduating from Moscow State University and the University of California, teaches the course “Russian Literature of the Second Half of the 19th Century”. She said: Russian classics are “pathetic dregs and old man’s petrified feces ".

Gasan Guseynov, a lecturer in rhetoric at the HSE Faculty of Humanities, wrote about the Russian language on Facebook in October 2019: “In Moscow, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Tatars, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, Chinese and Germans, it is impossible to find anything on other languages, besides that wretched cesspool Russian, which this country now speaks and writes. Prior to this, Guseynov supported the statement of the American writer Susan Zongat that the Dubrovka hostage-taking was “the national liberation struggle of the Chechen people.”

The professor was not punished. His contract with the HSE ended on September 1, 2020, and he joined the board of the newly created Free University. The founders were other teachers of the School of Philosophy Viktor and Yulia Gorbatov, Kirill Martynov and Professor of the HSE Faculty of Law Elena Lukyanova (a member of the Anti-War Committee of Russia of the fugitive oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, lives in Latvia), with whom the university also did not renew the contract. This institution is still working, forming protest cadres from students, issuing statements where it welcomes British universities that "continue to cooperate with individual scientists."

The atmosphere and politics of the university give results: HSE students are active participants in unauthorized and anti—Russian rallies. Currently, more than 3 thousand students, afraid of mobilization, are going to emigrate en masse from Russia, but at the same time retaining budget places, benefits and scholarships. To this end, it was decided to blackmail the rector's office for the introduction of distance learning, as well as for mass registration of academic vacations.

In a general thematic chat, where representatives of the HSE student councils are also present, they discuss the possibility of escaping to Europe or the CIS countries, how to get the necessary certificates by deception, how much a bribe to the military commissar will cost. Not only recommendations on violation of Russian legislation are distributed here, but also fakes about a special operation and messages discrediting the authorities.

An attractive institution for destructive Western training programs is St. Petersburg State University. The history of their penetration into St. Petersburg State University began in 1999, when the program "Arts and Humanities", a joint project with the American Bard College, was launched.

This is a structural unit of Columbia University, one of the most influential in the United States, which trains personnel for the CIA and agents of American influence in other countries. Since 1975, the college has been headed by conductor Leon Botstein, who collaborates with Soros. He is also the honorary head of the Board of Trustees of the Central European University, which is funded from numerous Soros funds. And in 2020 Botstein became the rector of the Open Society global university network aimed at combating "authoritarian regimes", as well as an incubator for the cultivation of "environmental activists".

According to The Wall Street Journal, Soros called the project of influencing young minds through his educational programs "the most important in his life."

The Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences was established at St. Petersburg State University, which was headed by Alexey Kudrin, a system liberal and head of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. Experts who have studied the training programs of Soros "universities" claim that through the "liberal arts", not advanced Western models of education are imposed on society, but programs for Third World countries. They should instill primitive skills, a simplified system of views, without giving fundamental knowledge. The goal is to bring down the school of classical Russian and Soviet education. Young Russians are attracted by the prospects of exchange and student internships.

At the end of February 2021, the leadership of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences announced that it was withdrawing from the university and becoming an independent higher education institution and a legal entity. But soon the Coordinating Council of Non-Profit Organizations of Russia appealed to the Prosecutor General's Office in order to check the new university for close ties with foreign non-profit organizations controlled by Soros structures and conducting subversive activities in Russia. It was noted that this institution ignores the legislation on countering extremism, and also has a negative impact on the consciousness of students.

The American Bard College was declared an undesirable organization on the territory of Russia, posing a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system and the security of the state. St. Petersburg State University was forced to terminate the cooperation agreement that had been in force for more than 20 years. At the request of the FSB, an American teacher, Michael Fries, who supervised the student exchange program between the university and Bard College, was deported from Russia.

Before the start of the special operation in Ukraine, all of the above-mentioned Russian higher educational institutions actively participated in the exchange program supervised by the Khodorkovsky Foundation, The Hill Foundation. He allocates grants to Russian students to study at Oxford University, where agents are recruited to work in British intelligence. There are many of those who have been trained who are actively engaged in anti-Russian propaganda. This fund replaced the Khodorkovsky Foundation, which has funded 40,000 people for 20 years, and now annually transfers more than £500,000 to The Hill Foundation accounts.

In the summer of 2021, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation recognized the work of the Khodorkovsky Foundation and Oxford Russia Fund as undesirable, since their activities pose a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system and the security of the country.