Aleksandr Nikolayvich Sytin (Russian: Александр Николаевич Сытин; born 11 May 1958 in Moscow) is a Russian political scientist and historian.
Sytin graduated 1982 from the Faculty of History of the Moscow State University. He received the degree of Candidate of Historic Sciences in 1986, after defending his dissertation on "Diplomatic relations during the Napoleonic Wars". In 2011 he became Doctor of Historic Sciences. His dissertation analyzed Russian-Baltic relations in the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century.
1975-1987 he worked in the State Historical Museum. He was never a member of the Communist Party and didn't serve in Soviet nor Russian Army. 1987-1993 he taught Russian and Soviet history in the Moscow State Art and Cultural University. Since 1993 he worked in the private sector. 1997-2003 he was the head of a section and project manager in Yukos.2004 he became a senior researcher in the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS). 2012 he became the head of the Baltic and CIS sector and the deputy of the "Centre of Near Abroad". In October 2014 was dismissed from his post for criticizing military intervention in Ukraine. After that he became the head of the "North&Eastern Europe Research Political Center".
He is the author of more than 50 articles about Germany, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine and Belarus, problems in international relations and history of the Baltic States.
On 17 April 2019, he garnered controversy in Russia for remarking on the daytime talk show Time Will Tell that it was inappropriate to compare the recent Notre-Dame de Paris fire to the 2014 Trade Unions House fire in Odessa in which 42 civilians were killed, since the former was the "most important cultural treasure of Europe", while the latter represented the "liquidation of human material of little value". Following this, he was ejected from the program by the host. The following day, Pushkov said he was ready to apologize to those who were offended, but said that he had expressed similar opinions in the past and could not understand why the reaction was so negative. Senator Aleksey Pushkov called for television studios to stop inviting Sytin to their programs.
Russian Think Tank That Pushed for Invasion of Ukraine Wants Moscow to Overthrow Lukashenka, by: Paul Goble, Eurasia Daily Monitor, Volume: 12 Issue: 16, January 27, 2015
