Alexander Gabuev. Photo: Yury Dud / YouTube
Russia’s Interior Ministry has placed journalist and director of the Berlin-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre Alexander Gabuev on its wanted list, independent news outlet Mediazona reported on Monday.
Gabuev, a renowned China expert and scholar of Sino-Russian relations, has reportedly been under criminal investigation for about one month, after the Russian authorities opened a case against him in April for allegedly violating the country’s “foreign agent” legislation and collaborating with a so-called “undesirable” organisation.
In May 2023, Gabuev, who now lives abroad, was named a “foreign agent” by the Justice Ministry, which accused him of making “negative statements against the Russian authorities” and “creating materials in collaboration with foreign sources”. In July 2024, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which houses Gabuev’s Russia Eurasia Centre, was declared an “undesirable” organisation, having previously had its Moscow branch closed in February 2022.
Gabuev has been a visiting scholar at the European Council on Foreign Relations and China’s Fudan University, and previously lectured in Chinese politics and political culture at Moscow State University. He has worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace since 2015. Prior to that, Gabuev was deputy editor-in-chief of the weekly Kommersant-Vlast, and was a Kremlin and Foreign Ministry correspondent for the newspaper from 2009 to 2013.
The Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, staffed by a number of senior Russian scholars, journalists, and political figures, has seen its experts increasingly come under pressure from the Kremlin in recent years.
Senior fellows Alexander Baunov, Tatiana Stanovaya, Alexandra Prokopenko, and Yekaterina Schulmann have all been designated “foreign agents” since February 2022, meaning that they are practically banned from public appearances or working in Russia, though it is unclear whether these figures, or others working at the Carnegie Centre, have also been placed on the wanted list.
