About 600 researchers say in the text that the invasion is “unfair and frankly senseless.” They fear that international isolation will prevent them from carrying out their work
About 600 Russian scientists and popularizers [as of Sunday, February 27, there were already 5,000], including the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Konstantin Novosilov and many members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, have written an open letter to show their rejection of the invasion of Ukraine. The text, published on TrV-Nauka, an independent science news site, says the war “is unjust and frankly senseless.”
[Read the interview with the Russian scientist Mikhael Gelfand, one of the promoters of the letter].“There is no rational justification,” the scientists write. “Attempts to use the situation in Donbas as a pretext to launch a military operation do not inspire any confidence. It is clear that Ukraine does not represent a threat to the security of our country,” they acknowledge, while lamenting the enormous human losses and how the conflict can shake the foundations of the established international security system.
“The responsibility for triggering a new war in Europe falls entirely on Russia,” they say.
The letter is the initiative of Mikhail Gelfand, a bioinformatician at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology near Moscow, along with other researchers. In it, scientists show their closeness to Ukraine, where many have relatives, friends, and fellow scientists. “Our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents fought together against Nazism. Unleashing a war for the sake of the geopolitical ambitions of the leaders of the Russian Federation, driven by dubious historiosophical fantasies, is a cynical betrayal of their memory, “they say.
“A step to nowhere”
The signatories are “convinced” that all problems in relations between the two countries can be resolved peacefully. In addition, after unleashing a war, “Russia has condemned itself to international isolation, to the position of a pariah country.” This means that scientists “will no longer be able to do our work normally: after all, conducting scientific research is unthinkable without full cooperation with colleagues from other countries. Russia’s isolation from the world means further cultural and technological degradation of our country in the complete absence of positive prospects. War with Ukraine is a step to nowhere.
It is bitter for us to realize that our country, which made a decisive contribution to the victory over Nazism, has now become the instigator of a new war on the European continent. Therefore, they demand “the immediate cessation of all military operations directed against Ukraine.”