The Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February shocked the world. Images of civilians fleeing their homes, broken bodies strewn across city streets, smoldering apartment complexes and mass graves have since permeated the news and social media platforms. This war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced another 14 million.
Wars do not take place in a vacuum. The effects of the war in Ukraine, from soaring energy and food costs to environmental damage and the threat of a nuclear catastrophe (SN: 07/22/2022, p. 6; SN Online: 03/22/07), are felt around the world – especially in the face of two other crises , the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and climate change.
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“The confluence of all these crises at the same time is very, very dangerous for the world,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said in May.
We often look for solutions to the world’s problems in science. But this tectonic shift in the geopolitical landscape has turned global scientific collaboration upside down, leaving many researchers struggling to find a solid footing. While the outcome of this change—like the outcome of the war itself—is uncertain, here are some examples of how the conflict affected scientists and their research.
Science in a war zone
Ukraine’s infrastructure has suffered massive damage since the beginning of the invasion. On the same subject : $2.8 billion in additional military assistance for Ukraine and its neighbors – US State Department. Hospitals, universities and research institutions were not spared.
Some scientists have sought refuge in other countries, while roughly half remain in Ukraine, and male scientists between the ages of 18 and 60 are set to serve in the military, says George Gamota, a US physicist who advises Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences. Gamota was born in Ukraine and moved to the United States as a child. He maintains close ties to his country of birth. When Ukraine became an independent country in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he helped advise Ukraine on building scientific infrastructure.
“When Russia attacked Ukraine, all hell broke loose. This situation has not really stabilized,” says Gamota.
He says research funding in Ukraine has fallen by 50 percent. Academic organizations around the world have stepped up offering assistance in the form of grants, job offers and resettlement programs. But financial support, whether from the Ukrainian government or independent organizations, still takes too long to reach scientists’ pockets, says Gamota. “Some get nothing.”
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The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is already looking into the future, how to rebuild. In September, the organization met with its counterparts in Europe and the United States. Latvia, Poland and other places describe how they restructured after the fall of the Soviet Union, says Gamota. “It was an exercise that I think is important. But probably the Ukrainians were looking for how the world can help us now.”
In March, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation donated $1 million to directly support Ukrainian scientists. The organization donated an additional $2 million to the reconstruction in October, which Gamota calls “fantastic.”
Slowdowns for physics and space
While science in Ukraine struggled with the protracted war, Russian science became increasingly isolated. The sanctions of Western countries directly and indirectly targeted the Russian scientific enterprise.
In June, the White House Office of Science and Technology announced that the United States would “terminate” its cooperation with Russia, having previously banned the export of American technology to that country. The policy applies to national laboratories as well as projects that receive federal funding and involve universities and research institutions affiliated with the Russian government. Many research organizations in the West also severed ties with collaborators in Russia.
These steps have particularly influenced some large-scale collaboration projects in the field of space research and physics.
There have been mission delays and a temporary shutdown of at least one space telescope (SN: 3/26/22, p. 6). However, the International Space Station, jointly operated by NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, is operating normally for now.
In the world of high-energy physics research, CERN’s particle physics laboratory near Geneva has announced that it will not renew international cooperation agreements with Russia and Belarus, which is helping Russia’s invasion, when the contracts expire in 2024.
When this happens, about 8 percent of CERN staff affiliated with Russian institutions, or about 1,000 researchers, will not be able to use CERN facilities. And Russia will stop allocating funds to experiments.
These measures strongly condemn the invasion, “leaving the door ajar for further scientific collaboration if conditions permit in the future,” CERN Director General Fabiola Gianotti wrote in a memo to staff about the decision. Until 2024, Russian and Belarusian scientists can continue working on current collaborations, such as ATLAS – one of the detectors that detected the Higgs boson in 2012 and is part of the ongoing search for theoretical particles, including dark matter (SN: 7/2/22 , p. 18). But new efforts are forbidden.
Science outside Ukraine and Russia has not escaped the economic consequences of the geopolitical turmoil. Rising energy costs – triggered by Russia’s cut-off of natural gas exports – are causing European research labs to reassess their energy use, the journal Nature reported in October. CERN is a major consumer, consuming the equivalent of about a third of Geneva’s average annual energy consumption.
The lab shut down its largest accelerator on November 28, two weeks ahead of schedule, to ease the load on the electricity grid and prepare for soaring prices and potential winter shortages. CERN officials have announced that the number of particle collisions in 2023 will decrease, exacerbating competition between researchers for accelerator time, reports Nature.
The war also put pressure on the already weakening global supply chain, leading to shortages and delays in supplies. The delays have caused obstacles to the construction of ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment, due to open in 2025 in France. “We’ve been through this project through thick and thin and we’ll get through it,” says ITER spokeswoman Sabina Griffith. ITER expected a ring magnet and other equipment from Russia, one of seven partners along with the European Union and the United States. Due to intergovernmental contracts, Russia is still part of the project. But for now, “everything is frozen,” says Griffith.
A chilling effect on Arctic research
Northern Russia is home to about two-thirds of Earth’s frozen soil, or permafrost. In total, the world’s permafrost contains almost twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere. As temperatures in the Arctic are rising almost four times faster than the global average, the region’s permafrost is melting.
According to some estimates, by the end of this century, thawed soil could exhale hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane (SN Online: 9/25/19). To better understand how climate change is reshaping the Arctic and vice versa, scientists need detailed measurements of permafrost carbon, temperature, microbial communities, and more.
But deteriorating relations between the West and Russia “make it very difficult to gather data so that we can get the clearest picture of the Arctic as a whole,” says Ted Schuur, an ecologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and principal investigator of the Permafrost Carbon Network. Now that much of the Arctic’s permafrost is inaccessible, Schuur and colleagues are looking for sites in North America and Europe that could serve as proxies for Russia’s permafrost, he says.
The terminated cooperation, “although intended to ‘punish’ Russia, has a realistic impact on the global Arctic community by restricting scientists’ access to scientific information and undermining the resilience of Arctic communities (especially indigenous ones),” Nikolai Korchunov, Russian Ambassador to the Major Arctic Affairs, he wrote in an email to Science News.
Korchunov chairs the Arctic Council, an eight-member intergovernmental body that acts as governor of the region, making deals on oil spill cleanup, trade, wildlife conservation, climate change research, and more. In March, the other seven member states of the Council – Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway and the United States – announced that they were suspending cooperation with Russia.
Works among the Arctic 7 continues. But the freeze has derailed Russia’s planned biodiversity and pollution monitoring projects, Korchunov says. “The cold scientific environment only adds to the uncertainty and risk of an ineffective response to a warming Arctic.”
But for now, some cooperation in the Arctic continues. Vladimir Romanovsky is a geophysicist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who studies the temperature of permafrost and relies on data provided by scientists in Russia. His team got results this year, but it’s unclear if his Russian colleagues will be able to take measurements in 2023, says Romanovsky. “It’s changing so fast, so fast, we don’t know what the situation will be until then.”
Most of the scientists in Russia that Romanovsky knows have problems with funding. At the moment, there is enough money to hire his associates, but not enough for field work. Cutting off Russian scientists from communication and data sharing is a “big, big problem,” says Romanovsky. He notes that they are now almost completely excluded from international meetings and collaborations.
Romanovsky believes that in the long term, Russian science may lose many young researchers, as it did in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed. “They just went somewhere else,” he says, leaving to find work in other fields to continue supporting his families. He and many others hope it doesn’t happen again.
Ukraine produces a third of the world’s sunflower oil and accounts for almost half of the world’s exports. These exports were valued at $6.4 billion in 2021.
How the war is affecting the economy?
Consequences of war In addition to the real human costs, war also has economic costs and inflation, causing uncertainty, increasing debt, and disruption to normal economic activity, among other things.
Does war hurt the economy? But the war also greatly complicates a number of pre-existing adverse global economic trends, including rising inflation, extreme poverty, increasing food insecurity, deglobalization, and worsening environmental degradation.
How the war in Ukraine is affecting the economy?
The economic fallout of the war has not been contained in Ukraine as rising food and energy prices have taken a heavy toll across the global south. The Russian invasion has devastated Ukraine’s economy, which the World Bank estimates will shrink by as much as 35 percent this year.
How does the war between Russia and Ukraine affect the economy?
On the day the invasion began, financial markets around the world plummeted and the prices of oil, natural gas, metals and food commodities soared.
Why is Ukraine important to us?
The United States reaffirms its unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders extending into its territorial waters. The U.S.-Ukraine relationship is the cornerstone of security, democracy, and human rights in Ukraine and the region.
How will the war in Ukraine affect us? Global food supplies are likely to be disrupted as well. We can also expect pressure from our European allies to take in Ukrainian refugees who are now fleeing their country en masse. The war in Ukraine will further increase inflation, which will reduce the purchasing power of every American family.
Why is Ukraine important to the world?
The Russian Federation and Ukraine are among the most important producers of agricultural goods in the world. Both countries are leading suppliers of agricultural products to world markets, where export supplies are often concentrated in a few countries.
Why is Ukraine important to the economy?
The most important sector of Ukraine’s economy is agriculture. Nicknamed Europe’s breadbasket, the country is the world’s largest exporter of wheat due to its vast tracts of fertile soil, which accounts for about a third of all arable land in Europe.
What does the US get from Ukraine?
| United States Imports from Ukraine | Value | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Iron and steel | $1.02 billion | 2021 |
| Articles of iron or steel | USD 138.31 million | 2021 |
| Electrical, electronic equipment | USD 99.38 million | 2021 |
| Animal and vegetable fats and oils, decomposition products | USD 88.93 million | 2021 |
What are the negative effects of war?
Death, injury, sexual violence, malnutrition, disease and disability are some of the most dangerous physical consequences of war, while post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety are just some of the emotional effects.
What are the 3 effects of war? The effects of the war also include the massive destruction of cities and have long-lasting effects on the country’s economy. Armed conflict has significant indirect negative consequences for infrastructure, public health and social order. These indirect consequences are often overlooked and underestimated.
How does war affect the economy negatively?
In the past, periods of heightened geopolitical risk have had large negative effects on global economic activity. Wars destroy human and material capital, shift resources to less efficient uses, reverse international trade and capital flows, and disrupt global supply chains.
What are 2 effects of the war?
The short-term consequences of war are dire: destruction of physical infrastructure, weakening of economic and political institutions, and obvious loss of life, among other things.
