LATIKA M BOURKE: Vladamir Putin’s AUKUS obsession exposes Australia’s dangerous blind spot on Russia

Vladimir Putin’s increasing interest in AUKUS shows why Australians need to urgently improve our understanding of the Kremlin, Australia’s former Ambassador to Russia has said.

This month, Russian President Vladimir Putin made his first-ever visit to the Kuril Islands, which are disputed by neighbouring Japan, to warn that the Indo-Pacific was becoming “increasingly prone to conflict”. AUKUS — Australia’s plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the US and UK — was singled out as a reason.

Peter Tesch served as Australia’s Ambassador in Moscow between 2016 and 2019 and held a string of senior diplomatic postings as well as helping develop the AUKUS policy.

In an interview with The Nightly, he said Mr Putin’s intensifying focus on AUKUS, combined with Russia’s alignment with China since the war in Ukraine, showed why Australia had to develop its own Russia expertise.

“We need to stop being as neglectful of the significance of Russia for our interests as we have been in the last 20-odd years,” Mr Tesch said.

“We only have two universities in Australia — the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne — where you can deliberately study the Russian language and associated fields and disciplines; so we need to staunch the haemorrhage of that investment in Russia literacy.

“It starts but does not end with the language because many people mistakenly think knowledge of a foreign language is about conversation. I argue it is about comprehension, and we need to better comprehend Russia’s worldview.

“We need to understand why they see the world in such adversarial terms, which does not mean we need to accommodate that, does not mean we need to submit to that.

“But we can’t craft thoughtful policy positions that store up our own strategic national interests without the ability to understand what Russia seeks to achieve, the tactics, techniques and procedures it employs to achieve that and why it remains of enduring relevance to us, even as we do not have a significant bilateral relationship,” he said.

The University of Queensland said that between 2021 and 2025, 327 students enrolled in Russian language studies courses.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshychenko said Ukrainians learnt Russian as a “matter of survival” and could help transfer knowledge to Australia.

“I agree with Peter Tesch. Ukraine can make a significant contribution to improving Australia’s “Russia literacy”, he said.

“For more than a decade, and especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainians have had to study Russia not as an academic subject, but as a matter of national survival.

We have seen firsthand how the Kremlin thinks, how it weaponises culture, and how it uses military force alongside disinformation, cyberattacks, economic pressure and political influence, and how it seeks to exploit divisions in democratic societies.

“Ukraine can help Australia build Russia literacy through universities, think tanks, defence institutions, journalists and civil society by sharing Ukrainian expertise, battlefield experience and lessons from confronting Russian hybrid warfare.”

Former Labor leader and Cabinet minister Bill Shorten, who is now the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, visited Ukraine last year and met with counterparts in the Ukrainian university sector.

He said Australian universities needed to play a role in building Australia’s national resilience.

“We need more specialisation, and that would require the university sector to stop competing with each other in a Hunger Games race to the bottom over the highly profitable courses,” he said.

“We need to have conversations about courses that might not be profitable but serve the national interest.

“We can’t have this endless commodification of high-profit, low-cost courses, so well done to UQ and Melbourne University for sticking with Russian studies.”

Margaret Twomey said studying Russian language and literature at the University of Melbourne in the 1980s was a lifeline when she served as Australia’s Ambassador to Russia in 2009.

“I did not appreciate in the 1980s, when doing my four-year Uni of Melbourne degree in Russian language and literature, how much my exposure to the literature would inform my role as ambassador to Russia 20 years later,” she said.

“Essential not just to analysis of the Russian worldview and sense of self but to credibility in engagement with Russians of all kind. It helped to know one’s Dostoevsky from one’s Tolstoy, along with the rich history which underpins Russia’s national identity.

“On an encouraging note, I have noticed a growing demand among undergraduates and, indeed, the upcoming cohort of public servants dealing with international affairs, to learn more about Russia. Our tertiary institutes need to catch up with this demand and the fact that geopolitical and language literacy are rivalling more traditional vocational paths in demand by both students and employers.”

Sophia Gaston, a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Statecraft and National Security at King’s College London, said that “the Australian Government has spent years, with some success, trying to persuade European partners like Britain to take the considerable security threats posed by China more seriously, even while Russia demanded greater focus”.

“It’s patently obvious that Western nations cannot afford to only concentrate on one specific threat, as our adversaries are becoming increasingly collaborative and the risks they pose are more interconnected,” Ms Gaston said. “Both Europeans and Indo-Pacific allies have much to learn from each other’s experiences and expertise.”