Of course not, but government and elite universities are deeply interconnected. Here [1] Yale bragging that "over 500 Yale alumni have been elected to Congressional positions." Just imagine amount of nepotism going on in institutions like Yale, to think that US ruling elite is built upon pure meritocracy is to fool yourself. Of course there would be opportunist like Snyder that will capitalise upon this hype around Ukraine.
Navalny himself attended Yale in 2010, where one might argue he found connections to US private money in fight for democracy against totalitarian Russian government.
[1] https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/11/11/yales-congressiona...
Yale have more in common with United States Military Academy At West Point where [1]
> The runner up after Harvard is Yale University, claiming 5 U.S presidents as alumni.
> Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower are the only 2 U.S. presidents who attended the United States Military Academy At West Point. They are also 2 of the most important military generals in American history
[1] https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/where-did-most-u-s-presidents-...
Additionally, even in government run universities in the west, there is the concept of academic freedom[2], meaning that faculty are able to teach their material freely without having to fear retaliation from the government (in the United States, this is effectively limited to "tenured" professors, it's more general in other countries.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_University [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_freedom