Eugene Finkel, a professor of international affairs, is working on a book, which will be titled “To Kill Ukraine,” and is planning to acknowledge a Russian GRU agent.

“I will thank him profusely,” Finkel said. “He was the one that prompted me to write this book.”

That GRU agent had posed as a student who Finkel taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. While Finkel had always known that there could be spies at a place like SAIS, last year’s discovery of his student’s real identity as a Russian military intelligence service agent was devastating. Finkel had written the undercover agent a letter of recommendation to the International Criminal Court, where he was seeking an internship with the group that is now investigating Russian war crimes in Ukraine. 

“You want to use me to know how Russian genocide is being investigated? That’s how I fight back,” Finkel said, referring to the book he is writing that will examine the origins of genocide in the current war.