Kremlin-funded university that trains Russia’s future leaders is firing all staff living outside Russia, in another sign of Putin crackdown: report

• Russia's top university for public officials is firing all its employees living abroad, per a report.
• RANEPA is known as Russia's breeding ground for future ministers, civil servants, and governors.

A Kremlin-funded Russian university that produces many of the country's top officials is preparing to purge all its employees living abroad, sources told independent Russian media.

The move comes amid Russia's ongoing crackdown on public dissent, which has ramped up since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Current and former employees of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) told independent outlet The Agency about the move, saying that by June 15 employees who left the country since 2022, as well as long-time expatriates, will be fired.

The decision came from above the school's vice-rector, they said, without specifying further.

The university did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

RANEPA is known as one of the top destinations for Russia's public servants and administrative class, churning out future regional governors, civil servants, and ministers.

But ongoing changes there in recent years have mirrored Russia's increasing authoriarianism under President Vladimir Putin.

In June last year, the university's former rector, Vladimir Mau, was charged with large-scale embezzlement, independent outlet Meduza reported. Mau had signed a letter in support of the Ukraine war, but behind the scenes he was viewed as a liberal figure who had intended to change RANEPA from within, as the Financial Times reported.

The case was later dropped, but Mau left the country, The Agency reported.

And in December, activist Yulia Galyamina, who was also a professor in the university's social sciences department, was fired under an amendment to Russia's notorious "foreign agents" law, per Meduza.

Galyamina, who had already been declared a foreign agent in connection to her outspoken opposition to the war, said her firing was "the first instance of the firing of a foreign agent after the adoption of this new, discriminatory law," Meduza reported.

The reported purge of expat workers at RANEPA also highlights ongoing concerns about a brain drain among Russia's elites and its science and tech sectors. On Thursday, the vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Valentin Parmon, warned that Russia had lost 50,000 scientists in the last five years, according to Interfax.

The UK Ministry of Defence also commented on a likely ban on senior Russian officials quitting their posts on Thursday.

This, the UK MOD said, likely applies to "regional leaders, security officials and members of the powerful Presidential Administration."

Meanwhile, in February, RANEPA's new rector, Alexei Komissarov, told Russian outlet Izvestia that, at Putin's request, the school was training 6,000 managers for what he called Russia's "new regions."

These refer to the occupied Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russia is almost alone in recognizing the "People's Republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk, and last fall conducted sham referenda in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in an attempt to proclaim the regions as Russian territory.