Background: Events and positions in February and March 2022
The February 24, Russia invaded
Ukraine, immediately followed with air attacks. Quickly, the global research
community condemned this brutal invasion.
The February 25, the Alliance of
Science organizations in Germany which includes the German Research Foundation
froze cooperation with the Russian scientific institutions. The Alliance
explained the German research funds will no longer benefit to Russia, no joint
scientific events will take place and no new collaborations will begin. The
same day, in the other side of the world, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) in Cambridge decided to end its relationship with the Skolkovo
Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow, which it co-founded in 2011. The
administration of the MIT declared, “We
take it with deep regret because of our great respect for the Russian people”.
The day after, the International
Mathematical Union, which awards the Fields Medals (the Nobel Prize for
mathematicians), cancelled the four-yearly conference which was scheduled to be
held in St Petersburg in July.
Some days later, on 5 March, the
European Commission announced the freezing of scientific cooperation with
Russia. More precisely, the commission will stop payments to Russian research
partners and will review all projects that involve Russian research
organizations under Horizon Europe and its predecessor Horizon 2020. Following
this decision, several European countries as France, Italy or Netherland froze
scientific collaborations with Russia
Opposite to these decisions, several
other science organizations refused to stop scientific collaboration with
Russia. For instance, on March 1, the International Astronomical Union rejected
a petition from Ukrainian astronomers to ban Russian astronomers. In a text,
the president of the Union, Debra Elmegreen wrote: “that would definitely be making a political statement, which the IAU
cannot do. The IAU was founded right after WW1 in order to bring colleagues
together, so we do not wish to drive them apart by deciding whom to support
based on what their governments are doing”. In France, the experimental
ITER fusion reactor has no plans at present to expel Russia, which is a full
member of one of the world’s biggest science collaboration. Laban Coblentz, the
ITER’s spokesperson explained “ITER is a
child of the Cold War and is deliberately nonaligned”. The CERN has also a
difficult position. Historically, the CERN did not expel Russian scientists
when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Afghanistan in 1979.
John Ellis, a theoretical physicist that worked to CERN for 40 years explained
“One of the CERN’s mottos is “science for
peace””. He pursued: “My personal
attitude is that we should really strive to maintain that collaboration, if
it’s all politically possible”. CERN Council is walking in a fine line. In
a special session on 8 March the representatives voted to suspend Russia’s
observer status and barred its representatives from auditing the Council’s
deliberations. Nevertheless, they did not expel the thousand Russian scientists
working with or to the CERN. Finally, the UK Universities advised its members
to review collaborations with Russia on a case-by-case basis.
To complete the picture, I have to
mention that the network Scholar at Risk took decisions to help Ukrainian
researchers. For instance, the Swiss section of Scholar at Risk decided on
March 7 to give 1 million Swiss Franc to help 10 Ukrainian researchers to come
in Switzerland and to follow their research.
In Russia and in Ukraine the
scientific communities are also moving.
On March 4, the Russian Union of the
University rectorates published a text to support the war. They explained that
the Russian University have to support the “denazification” and the “demilitarization”
of Ukraine. For the closed to six thousands signatories (in date March 18) this
war will allow the security of the Russia. In the opposite side of the
political chess, Mikhail Gelfan, a Russian bioinformatician at the Skolkovo
Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow published a letter the day of the
invasion to denounce this war. In this letter, he explained that there is no
reason for Russia to invade Ukraine. For him, the Russia is the only
responsible of this terrible war and all the death coming. He asked to stop
immediately this war and to sign the peace. His text has been signed (in date
of March 18 by 8000 people).
In Ukraine the scientific community
wrote and shared a petition asking several things to the international
scientific community. They asked:
• to block access to all
scientometric databases and materials of scientific publishers for citizens and
institutions of the Russian Federation;
• to make it impossible for researchers
affiliated with institutions and scientific institutions of the Russian
Federation to participate in international grant programs funded by the
European Union and other partners;
• to suspend participation of
researchers, students and institutions from the Russian Federation in current
international academic mobility programs;
• to boycott attempts at holding
scientific events on the territory of the Russian Federation (in particular,
scientific conferences, symposiums, etc.);
• to suspend indexing of scientific
materials published in the Russian Federation in all scientometric databases;
• to prohibit citizens of the
Russian Federation from being editors/coeditors/reviewers of international
publications.
This petition is still turning
around the world and the number of signatories is growing every day. Some
institutions/organizations already answered. For instance, on March 11,
Clarivate, which runs the citation database Web of Science, announced that it
will cease all commercial activity in Russia. Before this declaration,
Clarivate already suspended the evaluation of any new journals from Russia and
Belarus that are seeking to be included in the Web of Science. The Journal of
Molecular Structure (IF 3,196) will no longer consider manuscripts written by
scientists at Russian. Science and Nature refused. In an edito published on
March 10, the direction of Nature wrote: “But
Nature, in common with many other journals, will continue to consider
manuscripts from researchers anywhere in the world. That is because we think at
this time that such a boycott would do more harm than good. It would divide the
global research community and restrict the exchange of scholarly knowledge —
both of which have the potential to damage the health and well-being of humanity
and the planet. The world must keep generating the knowledge needed to deal
with this and other crises. The ability to communicate research and scholarship
freely across national borders has been foundational to science and
international relations — and has endured during some of the world’s worst
historical conflicts.”
My introduction is long. But it is
mandatory to have a complete background to understand the situation. As you can
see, the scientific community is divided regarding the ban of the Russian
scientific community.
Today, it is my pleasure to
interview Dr Oleksandr Sobol, a Ukrainian researcher at the Polytechnic School
of Lausanne and signatory of the Ukrainian petition.
Questions
1/ Dr Sobol, I can easily believe
that the situation is highly complicated for you. My first question is simple
in a normal situation but probably not here. How are you? How do you feel?
Thank you for asking. I am one of
not very big number of Ukrainian scientists who managed to flee the war and are now on a safe territory. Therefore, it
is a sin for me to complain about my present situation. Physically, I’m
absolutely OK. However, morally it is very difficult to observe this horror
which now happens in Ukraine – in the very heart of Europe in XXI century. And
it is especially painful for me and all my compatriots abroad because we have a
lot of relatives, friends, colleagues, students there, we know many of those
places which now are occupied or even destroyed by Russian aggression. Each new
day starts for us from reading the digest of news from our Fatherland and
calling relatives, any free minute is also devoted to this. Unfortunately, the
news are far from being good and only become worse as more and more Ukrainian
people lose their homes, workplaces and even lives. Photos and movies showing
the consequences of Russian’s invasion indicate that our country deals with an
uncivilized, medieval, unscrupulous enemy whose aim is just to destroy Ukraine
and its citizens. We see a plenty of evidences for this every day: chaotic
shelling and bombing of peaceful cities, killings and violence against
civilians in the occupied territories, the use of prohibited weapons, … (just
one of the very last examples is the Bucha massacre https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC03FYc_ZUA). Of course, we are trying to do
our best in order to help Ukrainians: from donations of money for the needs of
our armed forces and collecting humanitarian aid to taking part in different
manifestations and meetings. But nonetheless sometimes we feel helpless.
2/ Before the war, what were the
scientific links between Ukrainian and Russian universities? Did you have, as
in the European Union, exchange between students as the Erasmus program? Did
you have joint supervision for PhD program?
I know for sure that before 2014
when Russia annexed Ukrainian Crimea and occupied a part of Donetsk and Lugansk
regions, there were a lot of scientific links between Ukraine and Russia. Just
as an example, in 2013 as part of a group of students from Taras Shevchenko
National University of Kyiv I visited Moscow and a town of scientists
Chernogolovka (in Moscow region; the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics
is located there) and took part in a workshop on condensed matter physics.
Several my groupmates during the bachelor studies decided to enter Russian
universities in order to get a master’s and/or PhD degree there. We often
invited scientists from Russia to give talks at seminars, conferences held in
Ukraine and vice versa. The situation changed in 2014 after first acts of
Russian aggression. At that time, however, scientific community remained more
or less neutral. Of course, the number of scientific visits significantly
decreased but the communication didn’t stop even officially. Again, one example
from my own experience. According to the official rules which were valid until
2019 in Ukraine, a person willing to defend a PhD thesis was obliged to send an
abstract of their thesis to all major scientific institutions of Ukraine and
also to several institutions in Russia. This rule was, of course, an atavism
from Soviet times but even in 2018 (when I was defending my PhD) I still had to
do so. Moreover, I know for sure that until the day of Russian invasion,
February 24, 2022, there was a collaboration between the Physics Faculty of
Kyiv National University and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna.
This is only one of a big number of such cases. There were a lot of examples of
joint supervision of Master’s or PhD programs. E.g., 3 of 10 students in my
academic group on the Master’s level were supervised by two scientists, one of
which was from Ukraine and another from Russia. After graduation, two of them
got their PhD degrees in Russia. In just one department of Skolkovo Institute
of Science and Technology there were 6 or 7 researchers from Kyiv. Just after
the invasion most of them fled Russia because they were afraid of being
arrested.
But now, when Russia showed to the
whole world its true face and bombs our cities, our universities which
collaborated with Russian institutions in the past, naturally, any
collaboration ceased to exist. Although I know that there is a fraction of
Russian scientists who don’t support the invasion, their voices do not play any
role and are not heard (fortunately to those people) by the Russian government
and the majority of Russian people. There is a possibility of personal
communication with those people but not an official scientific collaboration.
In my opinion, any collaboration (co-supervision of programs, co-authorship of
the articles,…) with scientists affiliated with Russia will not be acceptable by
Ukrainian scientists for long times in the future. These things which Russians
do now in Ukraine cannot be forgotten and cannot be forgiven, such wounds do
not heal.
3/ As I summarized, some
international institutions/organizations took a quick decision and froze all
the link with Russian researchers, some others no. What do you personally think
about the decision of the ITER and CERN administrators?
I think these are not the correct
decisions. Freezing the links with Russian researchers is a kind of sanctions –
scientific sanctions – which must be applied to Russia. Unless the whole
civilized world simultaneously applies severe sanctions and makes the vast
majority of Russian people to feel the pressure and inconveniences, this war
will not finish soon. This is equally true for all kinds of sanctions:
economical, scientific, cultural, sportive, touristic etc. This is basically
the aim of sanctions – to show to citizens of a certain country that their
government is doing something wrong. If the sanctions are not coordinated
between different countries and do not cause the total isolation of an
aggressor, their efficiency tends to zero. This is like you want to produce a
vacuum: for this you need to close all the holes in the vessel and only after
that start pumping the air out, otherwise you fail.
That is why I think the world should
be consolidated in the question of sanctions. The more severe and comprehensive
they are, the less time we will have to wait until they start working and the
sooner this war finishes. This is actually the goal and not just to make
somebody suffer because they are Russians. (On the contrary, Russians are now
making Ukrainian people to suffer just because they are Ukrainians. I would not
like anybody to think that I’m asking for the symmetric actions with respect to
Russians. Those people are blinded by the Russian propaganda and the civilized
world must open their eyes. The only possible way for now are effective
sanctions in all spheres of human life.)
4/ In the petition you signed, you
asked, I quote, “to prohibit citizens of the Russian Federation from being
editors/coeditors/reviewers of international publications”. You never asked to
the publishers to ban Russian researchers from the international journals but to
ban them from the Editorial Board. Which is not the same. Thus, what do you
think about the answer of Nature? Nature is not answering about the Editorial
board but regarding the publication…
If there was a line in the petition
asking to prohibit Russian citizens from publishing their works in
international journals, I would have signed this petition as well. I would sign
every petition which is aimed at sanctions against Russia. As I explained
above, this is not because I hate all Russians, this is because I believe that
otherwise we cannot change the situation.
I would like you to understand me
correctly. I know that there are a lot of high-class scientists in Russia whose
contribution to science is very valuable. However, if they support aggression
(and we know that there are thousands of such scientists in Russia), they
should be taught somehow that this is not a right position and the world is not
supporting their position. The only civilized way to do so is to apply
sanctions. For athletes these should be sportive sanctions (e.g., exclusion
from international competitions), for singers these could be cultural sanctions
(cancelling their concerts, exclusion their songs from hit-parades etc.), while
for scientists only the scientific sanctions could be effective (freezing the
collaboration, prohibiting from publishing in international journals, exclusion
from editorial boards etc.). Of course, I know that there are a lot of
scientists who are against Russian aggression in Ukraine. I strongly respect
these people and appreciate their position. However, the western world should
not weaken the sanctions only because these people just exist in nature. First
of all, all sanctions are temporary. The more effective they are, the less time
they last. Second, there are other ways to publish their results, e.g., not
associate themselves with Russia in its current form. Finally, if their
position is not aligned with that of the Russian government, they are probably
in danger in Russia. In such a situation they could flee their country (at
least for some time) and continue doing science and publishing their results
without any restrictions.
From all that I mentioned above, it
follows that I do not support the decision of “Nature”. Exclusion from the
editorial board is already a good step but I suspect that this is not
sufficient. I hope that those horrible facts of Russian crimes in Ukraine will
force all conscientious international institutions to
strengthen sanctions, including the scientific ones.
5/ In the petition you asked “to
suspend participation of researchers, students and institutions from the
Russian Federation in current international academic mobility programs”. Here
it is a point I personally disagree. Indeed, it seems that you ask to blame
students and the possibility for a Russian student to do his/her PhD elsewhere.
Can you please explain this point?
First of all, I’m not the author of
this petition and the fact that I signed it does not mean that I support all
its statements (however, I indeed support the majority of them). Concerning the
academic mobility programs for Russian students my position is the following.
Western universities and other scientific institutions which are offering such
programs, should ask the applicants from Russia and Belarus (and maybe also
from other countries) to prepare one additional personal statement describing
their position concerning the Russian aggression acts throughout the world. If
students/scientists support Russia in these actions, why should the western
world give them education/experience? To allow them to apply this knowledge to
invent a new type of weapon? On the other hand, if the applicants do not agree
and does not support the policy of Russian government, why not to give them a
possibility to apply for academic position abroad. This could be a possibility
to them to flee from their country where they are in danger because of the
political position.
Therefore, here I would vote for a
selective approach in making decisions. If a person shares the right human
values like freedom, democracy, the rule of law, then why not to give them the
opportunity to use all the possibilities of the civilized world on an equal
footing with others?
6/ Do you support the position of
professor Mikhail Gelfan? What would you like to tell to him?
Yes, sure. I sincerely support the
position of Professor Mikhail Gelfan and strongly appreciate it. I would like
to tell him and all the signatories of his letter that I truly admire their
bravery to express their position even though it is not aligned with that of
Russian government. I would like to wish them to insist on their position, not
to give up, to stay safe and believe in better future for their country.
7/ Regarding the Swiss position, do
you think that 1 million francs given by the FNS is enough?
It is hard to say now whether this
is enough. Most of Ukrainian scientists which were in Ukraine when the invasion
started, remained there because of the martial law. However, some part of them
fled the country, mostly students and women. There are a lot of other countries
in the world that also offered some positions for scientists at risk. The time
will show if there is a demand from our scientists to increase the number of positions.
If so, then maybe the Swiss government could find some additional funds for
support. But still the announced amount already is a significant support for
our scientists, this is a helping hand in these hard times for which we are
very grateful.
8/ John Ellis said that Science
works for peace. You agree with this sentence?
In the time I was a student, I would
agree with Professor Ellis. But certainly not now. Indeed, this is the science
that gave us everything making our life comfortable, meaningful, safe etc. But
we should keep in mind that also all kinds of the most powerful and violent
weapons have been created by scientists. If we lived in a highly-developed
civilized world where all countries sincerely agreed to keep peace and destroy
all weapons (even though the science still could make it possible to recreate
them), then I would say that I agree with the statement of John Ellis. But
these last weeks we see that our world is still not as civilized as we thought.
Still there are some countries with an unpredictable behavior. And the problem
is that one of these countries – the Russian Federation – is a nuclear-weapon
state. In Russia, the science works not only for peace, that is for sure. This
is like a monkey with grenade – the consequences may be catastrophic.
9/ Another point I did not evoke in
my background is the biological weapons. On March 10, Vassily Nebenzia, the
Russian Ambassador to the United Nation explained that Ukrainian researchers
used bat to create bioweapons. What do you want to answer to this Russian
propaganda? In France, some citizen believed to this propaganda…
Well, I would prefer not to talk to
such odious people as Vasily Nebenzia. He
belongs to such a kind of people which lie more often than breath. To be
honest, I would be happy if Ukrainian laboratories had such a modern equipment
that would allow our scientists to conduct the research at high level (you will
not argue that production of biological weapons would require a very high-class
equipment). Unfortunately, the present state of Ukrainian experimental science
(even before the war) would never allow our scientists to do so. More than 25
years the science was not financed at a sufficient level that is why most
laboratories still used the equipment produced in Soviet times. Only in the
last 2 years, after the National Research Foundation was created, appeared a
hope for the revival of Ukrainian science. The war interrupted this process,
unfortunately, for a long time.
And now more concretely. There is
no, I mean not even a single evidence for the words of Russian propaganda about
Ukrainian bioweapons. But we see the evidences of Russian crimes in Ukraine
every day, every hour, every minute. Thousands of our citizens are dead,
millions of buildings are destroyed, long-term demographic consequences for
Ukraine are also very severe. Due to modern technologies, the whole world can
observe the brutality of Russian army in Ukraine in the real-time mode. For
this we don’t even need to make up myths about different types of weapons – almost all of them have already been
used against Ukrainian citizens. This is an obvious and undeniable fact.
I think the only possible way in
which we can fight propaganda is to show people the true facts. Just see the
photos in the internet made by independent international journalists in
Ukraine, listen to our people (most probably you can find some of them in your
area as millions of Ukrainians already fled their country), listen to your
government after all.
10/ For this question I am not
talking about the institutions but only about the “normal researcher” as me.
The researcher without power. Which message do you want to give him? How can
he/she help you to fight against this crazy and horrific war?
(Remark: here by “you” I mean not
directly you, but any “normal researcher”)
I am also a “normal researcher” like
you, like many other researchers in other countries. We cannot do global things
like at the level of countries or governments, but nevertheless our input can
also be valuable. First of all, I would suggest to operate only with facts and not
believe in propaganda (from either side it comes). Formulate your own position
in this situation. If you support this mad and horrible war, then better do
nothing, the conversation should stop here. But if (most probably) you are
against the war, there is a great variety of actions. For instance, you could
start from your institution: require your supervisors and high-level management
to officially state the position of the institution against the war; express
your opinion concerning the scientific collaboration with Russian scientists,
enrolling Russian students, supporting Ukrainian scientists/students; initiate
the collection of humanitarian aid to Ukrainian people at your institution.
Apart from your work, you may join different meetings and manifestations and
express your political position to your government. The voice of one person
will not be taken into account but it will be if there are a thousand or better
a million of such voices stating the same thing: “Stop the Russian aggression!
Stop the war!” There are also different ways to support Ukrainian people via
your local or international charity organizations. Last, but not the least,
just say a few words of compassion and support to Ukrainian refugees which you
may meet on your way.
11/ Do you want to add something?
Points we did not discuss. You have the place here.
I would loke to thank you very much
for paying attention to this very important topic, for your time and for
following the situation. It is very important to all Ukrainian people to feel
this support from all civilized world. This gives us a feeling that we are not
alone in the fight against the Russian
aggression. First two weeks of the war, I was in Ukraine and saw by my own eyes
how does the war look like. This is when you are awakened by the terrible sound
of military airplanes and bomb explosions, when you see how your 82-years old
grandmother and your pregnant wife run towards the bomb shelter several times
during the day and night, when teachers, doctors and engineers dig trenches and
weave camouflage nets, … To be honest, we were far from the hottest points but
what we have seen will be forever in our memory. As well as we will remember
the bombing of peaceful cities (like our Kharkiv, Irpin, Bucha, Mariupol,
Chernihiv,…), murdering peaceful citizens (like the Bucha massacre) and
destroying peoples’ lives (like of hundreds of thousands Ukrainians who lost
their houses, jobs and relatives). I wish you and all people that now support
us to never see the war in your countries.
I wish that such terrible things will never happen again in the future. Let
us hope that this war finishes as soon as possible by a victory of democracy
and freedom! Thank you once more for a possibility to express my position!
Dr Sobol, I thank you.
Interview pour
La Science te parle le 4/04/2022
