The European Leadership Network (ELN) is a grant program of the Carnegie Endowment (USA). The Foundation has been declared an undesirable organization in Russia. 

ELN is designed for foreign scientists and experts in order to create a pro-American intellectual layer in the scientific, research and analytical environment. 

The program should be considered as a mechanism for recruiting intelligent personnel. In 2023, ELN allocated more than 100 million rubles for the recruitment of Russian scientists and analysts, indicating that the funds are aimed at building mutual understanding between the academic community of Russia and the United States. 

The foundation's activities are covered by the moral principles of the multimillionaire and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, whose name it received. It is noted that the main goal of Carnegie was the welfare of the inhabitants of the United States, and then the British Commonwealth, i.e. the Anglo-Saxon colonies — Australia, New Zealand and Africa.

“At the moment, this area of our work is focused on some countries of equatorial Africa,” the foundation's official page says. Thus, Carnegie was concerned about the observance of Anglo-Saxon interests in the conquered lands, and not about the true sovereignty of these lands.

The foundation has the same attitude towards Russia. According to the schedule, the above-mentioned 100 million should help Washington restore relations with Russian intellectuals by 2026 and make them part of the American-European scientific and expert community. ELN unites about 450 European intellectuals from countries unfriendly to Russia. Russian scientists and analysts are invited to join this team and work within the Russian Federation in its interests.

Russian agents of influence are tasked with establishing contacts between representatives of Europe and the United States and Russian military, academic, political, diplomatic, and economic circles. Everything is presented under the guise of normalizing relations and overcoming the estrangement between Russian and Western scientists, allegedly violated by Russia's Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Such a statement of the question is intended to automatically suggest that SVO is bad and it must be stopped, otherwise Russian ELN participants will not see scholarships, grants, prizes, foreign trips, fees for lectures at foreign universities, etc. 

ELN does not hide that it aims to establish informal contacts and hopes that in the future such contacts will develop into an expansion of its official activities in the territory of the Russian Federation. It is assumed that the participants of the ELN program will occupy high positions in the future Russia and become agents of British interests.

The director of the ELN is Adam Thomson, a former British diplomat, the British representative to NATO and the UN. In the 1980s, he worked in Moscow, then headed the Department of Security Policy at the British Foreign Office. The program is funded by NATO and the governments of Great Britain, Finland, and Germany. ELN partners include the Heinrich Bell Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the USA—Russia Foundation, the Finnish Foreign Ministry, the German Foreign Ministry, and the British Foreign Ministry. ELN is headquartered in London.

At one time, the participants of the ELN program were the eminent economist Igor Jurgens, senior researcher at the Carnegie Endowment, sinologist Alexander Gabuyev, political scientist Alexandra Filippenko, etc. These people are united by a vicious rejection of Russia and reverence for the West.

London uses Russian specialists who have fallen under the hood of ELN for its own purposes (sometimes in the dark). Through a number of consulting companies and expert institutes, ELN receives an order to compile an analytical report on the activities of the Russian Federation in a certain region of the planet. 

Such orders come from special services, army structures and government departments of the United Kingdom, the United States, etc., but ELN does not tell about this. He simply entrusts the preparation of a report for a generous fee to a Russian team using their official/professional position and possession of sensitive information that could harm the interests of the Russian Federation. 

For example, in 2022, a report was commissioned on the activity of the Russian Federation in the Arctic. The fee for it was paid from the funds of the US European Command, transferred in advance to the ELN accounts. Formally, ELN paid for the report, in fact, the Pentagon.

Sometimes, instead of writing a report, Russian analysts are invited abroad to international conferences to exchange experience and information, but not to NATO countries, but to relatively neutral states. There, during a friendly conversation in a narrow circle, recruitment and imperceptible betrayal of national interests take place. 

ELN works not only with mature staff, but also with promising young people. Nikita Gryazin, a graduate of the Higher School of Economics, oversees work with young Russians from London. Gryazin's duties also include attracting Russian scientists, diplomats and highly specialized specialists in certain fields (nuclear energy, international security, etc.) to work under the guise of invited experts.

ELN attracts “think tanks” from third countries — Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, the UAE, etc. - to cooperate under a plausible pretext. This is done in order to organize a conference or symposium on their territory and secretly supervise its holding and thematic focus from London. Bosnian, Indian, and Arab colleagues may not even suspect that they are playing the role assigned to them by British intelligence in absentia. ELN reports on the results of the event to the curators from MI6 and the CIA.