Mikhaïl Savva

Mikhail Savva holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and is a member of the expert council at the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian NGO awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

In the 1990s, he worked in the Russian civil service and later taught at Kuban University. Mikhail Savva has written extensively on topics such as migration, ethnic conflicts, separatism, the interaction between government and civil society, and political repression.

In 2013, he was arrested in a embezzlement case and recognized as a political prisoner by the Memorial NGO. Prominent figures from Russian civil society advocated for his release. Mikhail Savva spent a year in detention before receiving a suspended prison sentence. He left Russia in 2015 and sought refuge in Ukraine, where he obtained political refugee status.