During the COVID-19 pandemic, massive open online courses (MOOCs) assisted HEIs in delivering remote teaching in the situations where university could not provide it in a traditional setting. Even before the pandemic there has been an interest in the MOOCs usage in different national contexts, with an expansion of research on the use of MOOCs in non-Western countries (see Altalhi, 2021; Fianu et al. 2018; Hamdan et al. 2018; Roshchina, Roshchin, & Rudakov, 2018). Building on the previous research, this study aims to analyse MOOCs acceptance and usage among academics in Russian higher education by applying the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model (Venkatesh et al., 2003) to answer the following research question: What factors affect academics’ acceptance and usage of MOOCs in Russian Tertiary Education? By doing so, the study intends to explore factors that influence MOOCs usage among academics in Russia and provide insights on how to support the adoption and the usage of MOOCs within higher educational institutions. Furthermore, the study can contribute to the methodological discussion on the research of MOOCs using UTAUT model and test the model in the context of Russian higher education.