The war in Ukraine, which will be one year old at the end of next week, has had direct impacts on both the human (with thousands of deaths and displacement of millions of Ukrainians, within the country or to other nations) and economic aspects, since it has compromised the infrastructure and the production of the invaded country, while the invader suffers from the sanctions of the West and its allies and the loss of manpower – the male population of working age that was displaced by the conflict or fled to escape the recruitment promoted by President Vladimir Putin .
The conflict also caused indirect damage, such as to Russian scientific production. Three cases are emblematic. In July last year, Russia announced that it will withdraw from the International Space Station by the end of the decade, once it has finished building its own space unit to launch into orbit. The departure will put an end to a partnership in space research that was one of the symbols of the post-Cold War era.
Another extremely symbolic rupture was the announcement by the European Organization for Nuclear Research that it will not renew the international cooperation agreements with Russia and Belarus (Moscow’s ally) after the end of the contracts, in 2024.
The Office of Scientific and Technological Policy at the White House also reported that the United States, which had already banned technology exports to Russia, is cutting collaborations with Moscow in the area, which includes laboratories, projects, universities and research centers linked to the Eurasian country, boycotted by research centers in the West.
In an article published last week in The Moscow Times, PhD in physical chemistry Alexandra Borissova Saleh mentioned that, in the years following the end of the Cold War, Russian scientific production went through years of uncertainty generated by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, before experiencing a boom provided by the billions of rubles injected into the economy with gas and oil exports.
International partnerships have been established since then, but the transformation of Russia into a pariah as punishment for its aggression against Ukraine has been compromising local scientific production.
“When I asked my friends recently what changes they have observed in Russian science since the start of the war, they all mentioned that international cooperation had become very compromised, attending conferences had become impossible due to visa problems and institutional bans on Russian participation. and contacts with researchers in the West continued only at the individual level,” wrote Saleh.
“Some highlighted Russia’s so-called ‘Asia drive’ [China, Índia e Irã estão entre os parceiros russos]but complained that this severely limits the scope of the collaborations.”
Specialists reported other problems, such as the hostile reaction of scientific journals to Russian research and articles, the departure of foreign researchers from the country and lack of access to important equipment and materials – a barrier caused by sanctions.
An expert who declined to be named told the journal Nature last year that the St Petersburg lab where he had worked since 2016 was short of crucial supplies such as reagents and equipment, and most of the young researchers were looking to leave the country. “It’s disastrous. Everyone is shocked,” he said.
The local and foreign researchers who stayed in Russia are under pressure from the government, victims of accusations of espionage, and the remaining scientific production is the target of attempts by the State to coopt it for propaganda purposes.
“Several recent espionage and treason proceedings opened against Russian researchers have once and for all destroyed any image that Russia might still have of a country where international collaboration is welcome,” Saleh reported.
Although Russian researchers signed manifestos against the invasion of Ukraine, many of the country’s scientific institutes, out of conviction or fear of retribution from Putin, declared themselves in favor of the war.
Arctic monitoring is compromised
As scientific production has a transnational character by nature, the West and its allies also suffer from the isolation of Russian researchers. A report by Science News highlighted that the north of Russia is home to about two thirds of the Earth’s frozen soil, the so-called permafrost, whose thawing by global warming could generate the emission of hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane by the end of this century.
The deterioration in relations between Russian and Western researchers has compromised monitoring of the region, according to experts.
“While intended to ‘punish’ Russia, [o isolamento e as
sanções] are realistically affecting the global Arctic community by limiting researchers’ access to scientific information and undermining the resilience of local communities, including indigenous peoples,” Nikolay Korchunov, Russia’s Ambassador for Arctic Affairs, told Science News.
Ted Schuur, an ecologist at the University of Northern Arizona and principal investigator for the Permafrost Carbon Network, confirmed this impression: “[O isolamento russo provocado pela guerra] it gets in the way of compiling the data so that we can get a clearer picture of the Arctic as a whole,” he warned.
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