Moscow

Russian president Vladimir Putin has responded to mounting complaints about the dire state of the country's science by offering a new grant scheme to young scientists and their supervisors.

In an announcement on 13 March, Putin said that 600 scientists under 35 years of age will receive supplementary grants of 24,000 rubles (US$770), with their supervisors receiving the same amount. The recipients will be selected through competition.

Putin hopes that the grants will help to slow the exodus of young scientists from Russia, and of young people from Russian science. The average scientist in Russia is now 52 years old, according to government statistics.

Although many researchers have derided the size of the grants — which are nonetheless worth as much as a typical Russian researcher's salary — others have welcomed the fact that Putin has at least acknowledged the problem.

Russian politicians are slowly turning their attention to the collapse of science in the country. For example, Sergei Mironov, speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, is backing a budget proposal that would more than double federal funding for science, from less than 2% of the country's total budget to about 4%.

“If the government doesn't focus attention on the fundamental sciences, they will soon die out,” Mironov told an Earth sciences meeting in St Petersburg on 5 March.

Boris Kagarlitsky, a sociologist at the Institute of Comparative Politics in the Russian Academy of Sciences, warns that the new grants could undermine research still further, if they are awarded in lieu of a long-term strategy of investment in research.

And some scientists commenting on Lenta.ru, a discussion website, have derided the grants as insufficient. “The government does not have any money, and should find the strength to admit it,” one anonymous correspondent said. “To pompously propose such small grants is hypocritical.” However, others said that the grants are better than nothing, and would be helpful to researchers such as mathematicians, theoretical physicists and economists, who do not need expensive equipment.