The Board of Directors of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) issues this statement to affirm the institution’s mission, leadership, and operating posture in a period of sustained external pressure.

KSE was founded thirty years ago to train Ukrainian economists to international standards and to put that training to work in the rebuilding of Ukraine. That mission is, by any honest measure, succeeding.

KSE alumni serve across the public-policy infrastructure of Ukraine — in the government, the National Bank, the line ministries, and the agencies and working groups where Ukraine’s economic, recovery, and security decisions are made, including bodies whose work is not public. KSE Institute supplies analytical capacity on sanctions, damage assessment, food security, recovery, macroeconomic resilience, and economic statecraft to Ukrainian authorities, international partners, and policy communities that depend on independent Ukrainian expertise. KSE University is expanding Ukraine’s human-capital base in economics, business, mathematics, STEM, engineering, and artificial intelligence through Ukrainian and international academic and institutional partnerships. KSE’s research output is read by the policy communities the country needs to be read by. This is the work the institution exists to do, and it is the work the institution will continue to do.

KSE is a thirty-year-old institution that has been the subject of public scrutiny throughout its life. The Board welcomes legitimate scrutiny — by journalists, civic actors, donors, and partner institutions exercising democratic accountability — and treats it as part of the operating environment of a serious public-interest institution. The Board separates that scrutiny from what KSE has also experienced repeatedly across its history and is experiencing again now: coordinated reputational-attack campaigns conducted by inauthentic and hostile actors, some connected to Russian influence networks, recognizable by the stable set of insinuating frames they recycle — money, conflict, opacity — bolted in turn to whichever piece of high-visibility public-interest work KSE is currently doing. The pretexts rotate; the frames do not. This is a category of attack documented internationally against Western-leaning Ukrainian institutions and against comparably situated civil-society institutions in other countries under hybrid pressure. KSE is one target in a class of targets, and the Board treats it as such. Telling democratic accountability and hostile disinformation apart is itself part of the institution’s responsibility.

The Board affirms its full confidence in the President, Tymofiy Mylovanov, and in the leadership of the institution. The President’s posture — engaging the public sphere directly, defending the institution’s record on the record, sustaining KSE’s state-cooperation and international partnerships through a period of pressure — is the posture this Board endorses. The Board affirms continued support for KSE’s external partnerships in economics, business, mathematics, STEM, engineering, and artificial intelligence, which are consistent with the institution’s mission and conducted under standard governance and compliance.

The Board will not engage individual factual claims circulated in the campaign environment, and will not characterize this statement as a response to any specific actor or claim. KSE does not investigate itself in matters of this nature. The Board welcomes independent scrutiny of the coordination network behind the campaign by qualified investigative journalists, academic researchers, and open-source analysts working to professional standards, and will cooperate with credible inquiries in the ordinary way.

Inquiries regarding this statement or KSE activities should be directed to email [email protected]