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Ukraine: The fallout of war

                  

Academic ties to Russia are being dismantled as its military assault on Ukraine continues

“Every night is a nightmare,” says Olga Polotska. Like her counterparts in organisations across Europe, Polotska, executive director of the National Research Fund of Ukraine (NRFU), used to spend her days supporting scientists and promoting research in her country. On 24 February, everything changed when Russian forces invaded Ukraine. She is now living on the front line of the worst military crisis to hit Europe since the Second World War.

“There is a full-scale war going on with missiles, heavy weapons, bombings and warning sirens going off continuously,” Polotska says in comments published by Science Europe, the association of major European research funders and performers. “I am not exaggerating when I say this is hell; reality is far worse than the images being shown on TV.”

Russia’s invasion has upended academic work in Ukraine. Higher education buildings are among those being bombed, and desperate researchers and students are alongside other civilians trying to escape to neighbouring countries, or joining the fight against the invaders. As Ukrainian citizens resist attacks from heavily armed Russian forces, much of the NRFU’s €27 million budget will be repurposed to support the war effort, the funder has announced.

Amid the chaos of the first few days of the invasion, the NRFU called on global academia to support Ukraine (see below) and to cut scientific links with Russia. “We are…convinced that immediate severance of all your ties with Russian scientific structures, which are in the service of the totalitarian fascist regime, is urgently needed,” the funder said on 27 February.

Politicians and academic organisations across Europe have heeded the call, with many suspending relations with Russian entities. The consequences for many existing research collaborations are less clear, however.

Decoupling research

There are plenty of current collaborative projects, as illustrated by a 2021 update of the European Commission’s Compendium of Science and Technology Cooperation, which outlines EU-Russia collaboration opportunities. In a foreword to the report, the EU ambassador to Russia, Markus Ederer, highlights the “very impressive” number of joint education and research initiatives, with more than 200 Russian organisations taking part in projects funded through the Horizon 2020 R&D programme, the predecessor to the EU’s current €95.5 billion Horizon Europe programme for 2021-27. 

Those projects included a €25m scheme for closer collaboration on large-scale research, running until 2024; and a €10m scheme on climate change in the Arctic led by Sweden, which was set to continue until 2023. The EU has said that Russian entities received €14m from Horizon 2020, and a further €47m from Russian domestic programmes and other sources for their participation in the programme.

Russia is also part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a global nuclear fusion energy demonstration facility that is being built in France, and was an observer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Cern. Cern has now suspended Russia’s membership, while a spokesperson for Iter said it would consider its position.

The EU moved more swiftly. On 1 March, almost every member of the European Parliament backed a resolution calling for “funding for all research and innovation cooperation programmes with Russia supported with EU funds to be immediately blocked or withdrawn and for interregional programmes to be suspended”.

A day later, the Commission announced that it was stopping the agreement of any new collaboration with Russian organisations through EU programmes, blocking EU payments to Russian entities and reviewing all existing research projects involving Russia.

Mariya Gabriel, the EU research commissioner, set out what this meant in practice. Describing the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “an attack on elementary values of freedom, democracy and self-determination”, she said preparations of grant agreements had been suspended on four Horizon Europe projects involving five Russian research organisations.

Relationship breakdown

The soul-searching over academic ties to Russia extends beyond the EU. In the UK, science minister George Freeman said on 27 February that he had instigated a “rapid” review of “all Russian beneficiaries (whether academic collaborators, companies or directors) of UK science, research, technology and innovation funding”. It is still unclear what the full scope of the review is, but the UK’s national funding agency, UK Research and Innovation, says it is “currently reviewing its active research projects with Russian partners”.

German leaders were among the first to take decisive action: the country’s Alliance of Science Organisations announced a day after the invasion that its members, which include the country’s biggest national funder and the academy of sciences, would “immediately” freeze formal cooperation. Denmark and other nations have since made similar moves.

Individual universities have also been examining their links with Russia. Stuart Croft, vice-chancellor of the University of Warwick in the UK, said on 28 February that his university had “agreed to review all our relations with Russian state institutions, with a view to terminating relations and contracts where possible”, including student exchanges.

At the University of Reading, also in the UK, vice-chancellor Robert Van de Noort said that his university—which has a strategic partnership with the Moscow State Institute of International Relations—would “review any activities that might support the government of Russia”, although he stressed that he would support the 1,000 students and staff at MGIMO who have signed an open letter calling for an end to the war.

As Marcia McNutt and John Hildebrand, respectively president and international secretary of the United States National Academy of Sciences, put it in a editorial for the journal Science on 4 March, the research world “must be cautious in determining which international scientific activities can continue to involve Russian science so as not to support indirectly the Russian government, economy and military”.

Personal peril

While wanting to show solidarity with academics in Ukraine, many organisations are hesitant to ostracise Russian researchers, some of whom have taken personal risks to criticise the war. More than 5,000 Russian scientists and science journalists have signed an open letter deploring the invasion, warning that Russian scientists “will no longer be able to do our job normally”, as “conducting scientific research is unthinkable without full cooperation with colleagues from other countries”.

Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors in the UK, said on 3 March that it was against “blanket academic boycotts”, and called on universities to make decisions about collaboration on a case-by-case basis.

The national academies of the G7 states—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US—also took a cautious tone. Despite describing the Russian invasion as “an assault on the fundamental principles of freedom”, they stopped short of calling for a block on Russian participation in projects, saying that they wanted to “acknowledge the Russian scientists and citizens who are ashamed of this attack and speak out against the war”.

Others have gone further in explicitly calling for links with Russian researchers to be retained, including the Global Young Academy of early career researchers.

Showing support

But, as the war escalates, higher education and research organisations in Ukraine continue to ask academics in the West to shun Russia.

In a plea to researchers around the world, the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance in Ukraine called for all collaboration with Russia’s higher education and research institutes to stop. “We are witnessing the genocide of the Ukrainian people: the intentional destruction of our cultural heritage,” the agency wrote on 1 March. “The higher education and research sectors cannot stand aside.”

Research organisations around the world are now having to make tough calls about which links to Russia should remain and which should be severed. As the Russian military continues its expansionist onslaught, academic institutions back home are becoming increasingly isolated. 



Ukraine support

As support for Russian research collaboration falls away, efforts to boost ties with Ukrainian scientists are underway.

While Ukraine was classed as an International Cooperation Partner Country in the 2007-13 EU R&D programme, it became more closely linked to European research when it associated to the successor programme in 2015. 

Unlike Russia, Ukraine has agreed association to the current Horizon Europe R&D programme and the Euratom nuclear research and training programme, meaning that it can fully participate in both once association is ratified.

EU research commissioner Mariya Gabriel said the bloc was “strongly committed to ensuring a continued successful participation of Ukraine”.

“This cooperation in science, research and innovation strengthens the alliance between the EU and Ukraine to deliver on common priorities,” she added.

The Czexpats in Science network, a group of scientists from the Czech Republic living abroad, has offered to help those fleeing the war to find work in Czech institutions, while the German-Ukrainian Academic Society has been collecting information on what support is available for students and academics from Ukraine.

Read more about Ukraine and the research community online

This article also appeared in Research Europe