In just five months, Russia’s war against Ukraine has killed thousands, displaced millions, and disrupted global geopolitics and economics. Science is also marking. The heaviest impacts are in Ukraine, where researchers have seen their institutions bombed and are facing upheaval and threats to their livelihoods. In Russia, scientists are grappling with boycotts and sanctions in response to their country’s actions. More generally, the crisis has created economic and political rifts that have already affected research in the fields of physics, space, climate sciences, food security and energy. A protracted conflict could foment a significant realignment of scientific collaboration models.
Here are seven ways war is already affecting research and could change it for years or decades to come.
Ukraine’s research in crisis
In March, Olena Prysiazhna, a plasma physicist at the Taras Shevchenko National University in Kiev, fled the Ukrainian conflict to move to the Netherlands. From there, Prysiazhna, like many Ukrainian scientists, went to great lengths to continue her research and teaching, often lecturing online to people entering air-raid shelters. On the same subject : Maybe You Are Better In Science Than You Think, New ‘Citizen Science’ Education Outlines. It has seen war become a daily reality for many researchers. “One of my students said his previous results were burned,” he says.
Since Russia invaded last February, some 4,900 civilians have died in Ukraine, some 6,000 have been injured and more than 5.6 million have left for European countries, creating the largest refugee crisis in a generation in the region. Another 6.3 million people are internally displaced. Among those affected are the country’s approximately 95,000 researchers: about a quarter of them – 22,000 – have fled the country, estimates George Gamota, a Ukrainian physicist living in the United States who helped Ukraine develop its scientific system. after gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Damage to the economics faculty of Karazin National University, Kharkiv.Credit: Genya Savilov / AFP / Getty
The war demolished what had been a slowly modernizing research system that was beginning to integrate with European partners. Many universities and science centers were severely damaged: the neutron source of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology was bombed, for example, in March and June. It is likely to take years to restore the scientific infrastructure, said Steve Binkley, deputy chief executive of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, in an April letter encouraging fellows to host conflict-affected scientists. .
The US Department is one of many organizations that help Ukrainian refugee scientists continue their work. Neighboring countries like Poland, which welcomed over 1.2 million refugees, were among the fastest to act: the Polish Academy of Sciences supported hundreds of Ukrainian scholars. Poland is now Ukraine’s main research partner, having overtaken Russia in 2019 (see “Ukraine’s International Research Ties”).
In Ukraine, public health researchers are concerned not only with the immediate loss of life and health crises caused by the war, but also with prolonged trauma. “Many people’s homes have been reduced to rubble,” says Margaret Harris, spokesperson for the Ukrainian team of the World Health Organization. “There will be a huge increase in the need for strong psychological assistance.”
Now that Russia has largely withdrawn to the east of the country, life – and research – is resuming in some areas, including Lviv, Kiev, Dnipro and Vinnytsia. But much of the country still has air raid warnings every night and the bombs are falling indiscriminately. Many people are concerned that winter will bring a renewed military offensive from Russia, says Oleksiy Kolezhuk, a theoretical physicist who quit his job at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kiev in January (before the invasion) to teach in the states. United and who currently has a temporary appointment in Mainz, Germany. Science and education are relatively low priorities, he says, but many hope postwar reconstruction will offer Ukraine the opportunity to redesign its science system and integrate more closely with Europe and the United States. “If we rebuild, we will use this opportunity to bring about change,” he says. “But no one can predict when this effort will actually begin.”
Russia becomes a pariah
Researchers in Russia, meanwhile, say the reaction to the invasion is cutting their country out of international research and that many people have already set off for better prospects elsewhere. Read also : The devastating impact of rising food prices on Americans. European and US organizations have severed ties with Russian science, including the cancellation of joint projects.
“People have been so disgusted by Russia’s actions that the normal slogans of the international being of science and of researchers cooperating under all circumstances have run out,” says Loren Graham, US historian of science in Russia and professor emeritus at Massachusetts. Institute of Technology in Cambridge, which has been in contact with Russian researchers. “The morale of the Russian intelligentsia is very low,” he adds.
Many Russian academics signed letters condemning the war, although official bodies, such as the Union of Russian Rectors (representing hundreds of Russian university rectors or presidents), supported the invasion.
Sanctions that restrict the movement of goods and money are affecting laboratory work, Russian researchers say. A scientist who left a post in Europe six years ago to build a laboratory in St. Petersburg says crucial supplies of reagents and equipment have been cut off, collaborations with Western colleagues are strained, and most of his young scientists want to leave. . He’s trying to help them do it. “It’s disastrous,” says the scientist, who asked not to be named due to concern over political reprisals. “They are all in shock.”
The Russian science foundation suggested in April that scientists seek “new funding partnerships” with nations including China, India and South Africa, which have not publicly severed research links with the country. Graham thinks such a change is likely, but that Russian researchers still hope to re-establish ties with their US and European colleagues (see “Russia’s International Research Ties”).
Some scientists predict that the isolation of Russian researchers will continue for some time, setting the country’s science back 10 to 20 years and causing a massive brain drain of young scientists. Even if Russia were to withdraw tomorrow, too much damage has been done to scientific institutions that have severed their ties to resume their work with the country, particularly with institutions that supported the war, says Robert Feidenhans’l, a physicist. of X-rays at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen. Regarding the prospect of resuming relationships, he says, “I don’t see it as an option.”
Physics and space take a hit
Russia is on the periphery of most international science networks, which has made it easier for Western countries to break off collaborations. But it plays an important role in some global research. Read also : Skift’s future travel program. Work done on large-scale physical infrastructure, especially in Europe, could suffer for years.
Russia has a history as a powerhouse of physics, and physics has long been the focus of science diplomacy, with East-West relations continuing throughout the Cold War. But physics organizations are among those who have broken ties in the wake of the invasion. CERN, the particle physics research laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, has suspended new collaborations and contracts with Russian-affiliated scientists and institutions and has resolved some existing agreements with both Russia and its ally Belarus ending in 2024, so most of the scientists affiliated with the institutions of these countries will no longer be able to work at the facility. This could also disrupt planned updates: CERN’s ATLAS experiment, for example, is seeking new suppliers and funding to cover 3% of the material costs Russian institutions were supposed to provide, says ATLAS spokesman Andreas Hoecker. (An outlier is ITER, the international nuclear fusion project based in southern France – its governance structure means there is no way to oust Russia even if international members wanted to.)
The break with Russia has affected some organizations financially. The € 1.25 billion (US $ 1.4 billion) European free electron laser (XFEL) X-ray laser, for example, has postponed the ability of Russian scientists to access the facility’s high-energy beam, which researchers use it to probe the properties of matter. Russia usually pays 26% of the operating costs, but has not paid the last installment, a gap that will be “a huge challenge to bridge,” said Feidenhans’l, chairman of the board of XFEL. And the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), a € 3.1 billion particle collider under construction in Darmstadt, Germany, risks facing delays and additional costs. It has suspended cooperation with Russian state institutions and is reviewing cooperation with other institutions in the country, including the use of Russian-made components. As well as suffering from delays and cost implications, European laboratories will suffer from the loss of Russian expertise, particularly in accelerator technology and related fields.
In space projects, the ExoMars project, a € 1.3 billion Europe-Russia mission, has been particularly hard hit. It was to fly a Russian rocket by the end of the year and use the Russian-designed landing gear to transport Europe’s first rover to the Martian surface. But the European Space Agency (ESA) has now stopped its cooperation with Russia. It is now likely that ExoMars will be delayed until at least 2026 and, more realistically, 2028. ESA is studying the design of its own landing gear, potentially with help from NASA, but the future of the mission (which has been delayed twice previously) depends on ESA member states paying enough to cover the redesign and keep the rover ready for launch for many more years.
The European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover, in preparation in Stevenage, UK.Credit: Aaron Chown / PA images / Alamy
A rare area of mostly ongoing international cooperation is the International Space Station (ISS), the Earth-orbiting outpost that originated in a 1990s relationship between the United States and the former Soviet Union and is now operated by space agencies in the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. While he was head of the Russian space agency, Dmitry Rogozin violently threatened to get Russia out; last week he was fired from his post. Even during his tenure, the agency released a photo of cosmonauts on the ISS with the flags of Luhansk and Donetsk, territories that Russia occupies in Ukraine. Yet astronauts and cosmonauts have continued to travel to and from the ISS, including in Russian transport vehicles, and the search continues aboard the football-field-sized station. (The station is designed to be interdependent, with the NASA-built side providing electricity for the Russia-built side and the Russia-built side providing the primary ability to periodically increase orbit so that the ISS doesn’t burn in the ‘atmosphere.)
Arctic science changes course
Among the highest-profile areas of collaboration between scientists in Russia and elsewhere is Arctic research, particularly when it comes to climate change. The Arctic is warming at least three times faster than the global average, and Russia makes up about half of the circumpolar Arctic.
The Arctic Council, which is the main forum for geopolitical cooperation in the Arctic and currently chaired by Russia, suspended its official work in early March. Seven of its eight members decided in June to resume limited work without Russia. Many Arctic researchers, especially in Europe, have had to suspend collaboration with scientists in Russia due to restrictions imposed by their funding agencies or institutions. A series of field experiments, including efforts to monitor permafrost thawing and landscape change for reindeer herders, have been geared towards working in the North American or European Arctic, rather than the Russian Arctic.
Russia has experience in permafrost sample collection, shown here at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk.Credit: Credit: Mladen Antonov / AFP / Getty
Some jobs can be done remotely, but not only. Researchers outside of Russia can use Earth observation satellites to remotely monitor many aspects of global change, such as Siberian fires. But measurements on the ground are often needed to confirm the accuracy of what satellites see, and that data, usually collected by scientists in Russia, may not be shared with non-Russian scientists any time soon.
“To study the Arctic climate, we need data from the entire Arctic,” says Kim Holmén, a climate scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø. “If we can’t share data and measurements freely, the quality of our research will deteriorate.”
Climate responses disrupted
More generally, war seems likely to have a far-reaching effect on the world’s response to climate change. It contributed to the biggest energy shock in decades, driving up oil and gas prices and reshaping the global energy system. This could have both positive and negative consequences for the transition to cleaner energy.
Europe is struggling with its heavy reliance on Russian fossil fuels, which puts it in the awkward position of subsidizing the Russian invasion with billions of dollars in monthly fuel purchases. The European Union banned imports of coal and other solid fossil fuels from Russia after 10 August; another measure will phase out most Russian oil imports only by the end of the year. However, China and India bought much of the Russian oil left on the market by Western embargoes, and Russia now exports more oil than it was before the war began, according to Simone Tagliapietra, an economist at Bruegel, a think tank. based in Brussels.
It is less clear whether Europe can wean itself off Russian natural gas without serious economic consequences. It has reduced some imports (see ‘Gas supplies from Europe’), but it is mainly because Russia itself has reduced the flow, Tagliapietra notes: Russia has cut off supplies to several countries that have refused its request to pay the ‘energy in rubles, and reduced shipments to Germany, which also affect supplies to Italy, France and Austria.
Source: Simone Tagliapietra, Bruegel
In the short term, many researchers fear that rising prices and growing concerns about energy security could translate into new investments and subsidies for fossil fuels and less money for almost everything else. The most obvious example is coal-fired power, which is getting a boost in Europe as Germany, the Netherlands and other countries prepare for a winter without their usual natural gas reserves; there could also be impacts globally, including investments in coal in places like Southeast Asia.
However, European countries are also trying to use the situation as an opportunity to accelerate the transition from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy; Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK have all announced plans to accelerate the production of electricity from renewable energy. The European Commission has presented a plan to quickly move EU countries away from Russian energy, including by increasing renewable energy and promoting hydrogen production. “In the long run, I am cautiously optimistic that it will be useful,” says David Victor, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
The Klingenberg natural gas power plant in Berlin; Germany hopes to wean itself off Russian energy imports. Credit: Sean Gallup / Getty
International tensions could also lead to talks on the UN climate convention. It is possible that concerns about national security and economic competitiveness could undermine global cooperation on climate-related issues. This appears to be one of the scenarios, SSP3, developed for the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Projections of the model in that scenario, called “regional rivalry – a rocky road” and defined by trade wars and a resurgence of nationalism, tend to show that the world has exceeded its climate targets and reached around 4 ° C of warming in this century.
Sustainable-development setback
In April, António Guterres, UN Secretary General, said war could throw a fifth of humanity – 1.7 billion people – into poverty, destitution and hunger on a scale not seen in decades. . The most immediate concern has been food insecurity, due to disruptions in exports of food and fuel from Ukraine and Russia, as well as export bans by nations elsewhere while supporting their own supplies. But the diversion of aid budgets and global focus on Ukraine, coupled with rising interest rates to curb inflation and global economic recession, also appear to undermine development financing.
Wheat being processed in Odessa, Ukraine, in mid-June 2022; much of Ukraine’s grain has been run aground in silos in Odessa.Credit: Metin Aktas / Anadolu Agency / Getty
More broadly, Guterres says the confluence of wars, the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis is jeopardizing progress towards the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and warns of a “lost decade” of development for poor countries.
This is a bleak picture for researchers working on global health and sustainable development. “All indications point to a dramatic reversal of almost all indicators due to the Russian invasion,” says Adam Rogers, former senior advisor for the United Nations Development Program and now an independent advisor on sustainability issues, in Washington DC. .
But the crisis could lead to renewed focus on neglected research areas. Studies on the efficient use of fertilizers and alternatives to inorganic fertilizers, for example, are suddenly in vogue: in June, US President Joe Biden announced a “Global Fertilizer Challenge” to raise funds for this field. As with the energy shock, the invasion of Ukraine could lead to food security research receiving more attention than it deserves.
Global science reshaped?
Science has an entrenched international character, because researchers recognize the importance of maintaining the free flow of knowledge even during conflicts, says Jon Agar, who studies the history of science and technology at University College London.
But wars tend to change these priorities, he adds, with scientists often gathering for national goals. World War I, for example, led to lasting divisions that reorganized European science around two fields, with British and French researchers in one and German and Austrian researchers in another.
International collaborations in science ultimately tend to follow geopolitical alignments. So a long-standing Western diplomatic split with Russia could be mirrored in research as well, with Russia moving towards greater collaboration with China and India. The idea is speculative, partly because it is not clear that China has much to gain. In a July policy paper on the geopolitics of global science, researchers from organizations including the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, concluded that Chinese leadership would gain more from maximizing global scientific collaboration than from harming its own. Western partnerships by entering into a bipartite research engagement with Russia, a country with a “sick position in international science” (see go.nature.com/3nwduvb).
However, Russia’s boycotts come at a tense time for global science, says Kieron Flanagan, a science policy researcher at the University of Manchester in the UK. Many countries, including the UK and the US, have tightened export controls on key technologies and introduced stricter guidelines on international partnerships with some countries, such as China. “We can detect movements towards greater protectionism or technonationalism, which clearly could have implications for opening countries to global scientific collaboration,” he says. But Flanagan suspects that some of these measures may be directed more at a desire to control cutting-edge technologies than a lack of appetite for global research.
Even so, a world of geopolitics and tougher sanctions seems likely to slow cross-border collaboration. If the war continues, “I expect research collaboration to realign,” says Agar.
