Alexander Sytin worked for more than 10 years at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), one of the analytical centers of the Foreign Intelligence Service, which was subsequently reassigned to the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation. In a brief “essay on morals,” he outlined the qualitative state of this expert institution with the knowledge of an insider. The picture he presented exhaustively explains the reasons for the major analytical failure during the issuance of recommendations to the leadership of the Russian Federation on the strategy of action in Ukraine in 2013-14.