Nature’s Take: how the war in Ukraine is impacting science

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

Welcome to Nature’s Take. This is the show where we dive deep into the stories that matter in science. In each episode, we pull in some of Nature’s finest into one room, present them with a topic, and see where the discussion leads us. In this episode, we're talking about Ukraine. Since Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine, the war has killed thousands of people, displaced millions, and ruptured global geopolitics and economics. And science is by no means exempt from the fallout. The conflict has disrupted international collaborations, thrown a curveball to scientific publishers, and is having huge impacts on the fight against climate change. Not to mention the devastating human cost to scientists themselves, thousands of which have found themselves caught in the crossfire. A few weeks ago, I pulled together some very knowledgeable colleagues to talk this out. I should add that since our chat, things have shifted a little in the conflict. Ukraine has pushed back and reclaimed some Russian-occupied territory. In response, Russia is attempting to draft more men of fighting age into the military, and is seeking to annex some of the occupied Ukrainian territory. But as the conflict continues to develop at a pace, the impacts on science remain a constant rumble in the background, and that includes everything we discussed for this episode. And so, without further ado, let's dive into the show. First, some introductions. We have Nisha Gaind, Nature’s European bureau chief.

Nisha Gaind

Hi, I'm Nisha, and I've been coordinating our coverage of the war in Ukraine.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And Richard Van Noorden, features editor here at Nature.

Richard Van Noorden

Hello. I’ve been putting together a feature on how the war in Ukraine is changing global science.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And I’m your host, Nick Petrić Howe. Thank you both for joining me. One thing I was keen to talk about is that Nature is a science publication, and so for some of our listeners, it may be surprising that we're dedicating this much coverage to the war in Ukraine. Nature has decided, though, that this is a science story. Can we just unpack that a little?

Nisha Gaind

One simple way of looking at it is to just look at the players. These are big, big players. Russia is a former superpower and it is sort of butting up against NATO, and that's causing seismic shifts in Europe. That's affecting things like energy, which will have a toll on climate change. That's a topic that is front and centre for Nature. And the way that this is shifting geopolitics is something that could affect the sort of fundamental global science system. It could affect research funding. It could tip the global economy into recession. So, to borrow the phrase of a colleague of mine, Sara Abdulla, she said, it's not a story necessarily about war for Nature. It's about fuel and finance.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And we'll get into some of those big impacts as we continue this discussion. But I'm also wondering as well, from your perspectives, what is Nature’s role here? Where do we fit into this coverage, and where are we having an impact?

Richard Van Noorden

Well, we're sort of, I would say, on two fronts. First of all, especially Nisha, we're talking closely to the researchers who are actually directly affected by war, whether they're in Ukraine or fled Ukraine, and some of them are in Russia as well. And there, it's about finding out what impact this is having on the research that they were doing and their livelihoods. And then more broadly, there's sort of all the wider knock-on effects that this could be having, as we said, on energy, climate change, food security, physics, all these other research projects. And our aim there is to find out what's going on. There's been some very difficult decisions being made by all kinds of countries, or even at the individual project level, as to whether to continue collaborating with Russia. On the other side of it, we've also reported on countries that are not publicly renouncing links with Russia, such as in China and in South Africa. Maybe some scientists there don't agree with that, but those links are still being kept in some cases. So, those are where we sort of see our reporting being angled. And we get a lot of correspondence as well, from scientists all over the world in response to the effects and the way that this war has touched them.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And we're talking about science today, but also there are obviously human costs to this war. Nisha, you've been talking to people, scientists from Ukraine, about how this conflict has upended their lives. What is the sense that you're getting from them?

Nisha Gaind

Yeah, I've been speaking to people even before the conflict started when it was clear that tensions were going to flare. These are tragic stories underpinned by the great courage of many of these researchers. Researchers are responding differently depending on where they are in Ukraine. Many will know that men of fighting age aren’t allowed to leave Ukraine, so that means that they have stayed behind, families want to stay with them. So, most of the researchers that we have seen leaving, and we think it's about 20,000 or so, have been women with children or older researchers. And then in the past couple of months, when some of Ukraine has calmed down a little bit, we also hear that sort of life has started to begin again. There are places where people are going to university. People are continuing to do their research. And then on the flip side, there are, of course, places in which institutes have been completely destroyed by shelling, for example, in Kharkiv. So, there's a range of responses from researchers. And then there's also the responses of often expert Ukrainian researchers and its sort of allies or the scientific community at large, who have really come together to support their colleagues in Ukraine and to take people into labs and give them jobs if they have fled. Or many agencies in the US, in the UK, or organisations are creating fellowships and ways to support Ukrainian scientists in this really difficult time.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And thinking about that, you mentioned sort of shelling of institutions, what has been the sort of direct impact on science? Is it even possible to do science in this conflict?

Nisha Gaind

Yeah, that's a great question. It's quite a thing to see war like this unfold in front of our eyes. So, initially, the response was a sort of downing of tools, as you would expect. The invasion was a sort of all out offence on Ukraine at the very beginning, at the end of February. So, people were naturally fearing for their lives. The priority was survival. There were pockets in the centre of Ukraine that were relatively calm and where people were able to go to university, they were able to teach classes, or they were used to teaching classes remotely because of the COVID pandemic. But, of course, because of the emotional stress of the war, the focus was really on survival. So, people weren't really thinking about research. I mean, that was something that people just said to me straight up. They said, ‘Who cares about research. We've just got to survive.’

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And then thinking more broadly, beyond Ukraine, what are the sort of impacts more internationally? Like how are things shaping up in the scientific world because of this conflict? For example, international collaborations are going to be difficult in such an environment.

Richard Van Noorden

Well, this is kind of a decision that other countries and other institutions have had to take. And it's actually quite interesting to see that many institutions at the sort of national and international level have said no cooperation should occur with any Russian institutions. That's happened in the United States. It’s happened in the European Union. But they're leaving a little bit of elbow room for, you can sort of maybe continue to work informally with your Russian colleagues. And people are sort of interpreting this slightly differently, depending on if they are actually involved in projects with Russian scientists. So, we've talked to people working on climate science, who were sort of hoping still to do some collaboration because they need the data that Russian scientists are collecting. But it's not very clear whether maybe they'll just carry on and won't publish immediately. And indeed, in scientific publishing, we've heard of one or two journals that are saying we won't accept papers from Russian authors at all. But this is not actually a common response because many publishers, including Nature, have taken the view that they'll continue to communicate research, and that's the view for the moment. Some experiments, it's been reported, have taken rather sort of creative approaches to continue to work with Russian researchers while not actually sort of saying so. So, one physics experiment called Belle in Japan, according to Research Professional News, is omitting institutional affiliations on their publications list so that it's not immediately clear that they're still working with authors from Russia. But overall, the story is that everyone is so disgusted with the actions of Russia that a boycott just has to happen. It's not very clear whether it will do anything, but it's sort of expressing the academic community's disgust with what's going on. Now, luckily, Russia is, well, luckily from one point of view, Russia is not really at the centre of most global scientific networks. Most of its work is domestic. About a quarter of its papers are done internationally with other researchers. So, there are some fields of science that are having to think about this a lot more seriously than others. And infrastructures like CERN, for example, have said they've cancelled new projects, and they’ve said that Russian and Belarusian scientists must stop working there when current contracts finish, which is in 2024. And there are other large physics projects that look like they might lose money. Russia is a member and maybe won't be able to pay. So, we might see some sort of really obvious impacts there. But as I say, a lot of Russian science is not actually done collaboratively and, say, to an extent, researchers can sort of afford to go along with these boycotting actions, while not drastically hurting science as a whole.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And I guess it's a very difficult balancing act. But is there a risk that, through some of these boycotts, it will punish individual Russian scientists who may actually be opposed to the war?

Nisha Gaind

Of course, and that feeling was made very clear, I mean, the day after or the day of the invasion because these condemnations and these boycotts and embargoes were coming in thick and fast. So many institutions, Nature included, put out statements condemning the war. That was more or less the world was saying that, with some notable exceptions. I was on the phone with researchers in Russia in those early days who were also coming together to condemn the war. Thousands of Russian scientists condemned the war. And on the phone, they were really almost sort of pleading to get the message out to the international community that they don't support Putin, they don't support the war, please don't punish them. But on the other hand, you're then talking to Ukrainian scientists who are fearing for their lives. They are moving into bomb shelters because their neighbour has invaded them and has just started this brutal and horrific war. And so, the chorus from Ukrainian scientists was that you absolutely must not allow Russian scientists into international collaborations. You absolutely must not publish them. So, yeah, there are arguments on both sides. And there are some organisations that have principles about how science should behave in the face of these sorts of political boycotts. But there's not necessarily an easy answer to be able to afford Russian scientists against the war the liberty of continuing to take part in international science because of what their country is doing.

Richard Van Noorden

And that's why many are leaving Russia and there's a there's a big flight out of Russia, and some researchers saying that they might work with Russian scientists who've left expressing their displeasure, when there's not much political room for them to protest if they are in Russia. Freelance reporter Alison Abbott told us that she has spoken to scientists who say that informally – they’re in Russia – informally, their papers are being slowed down and rejected because individual referees are just rejecting them or dropping out and saying that western collaborators are just dropping collaboration, and this not being out of any particular formal announcement that's been made. So, there's this sort of undercurrent, we think, of this individual anger still going on. And that's why, yeah, so many people are trying to leave, and Allison also spoke to a researcher who said, ‘I'm trying to help my scientists leave because they have no research future here.’ I mean, no one knows how long this is going to go on. But one researcher we talked to, Robert Feidenhans’l, who happens to be on the board of XFEL, a large particle physics project, he said if Russia stopped its aggression tomorrow, ‘I don't think XFEL could just go back to its collaboration with Russia. Too much damage has been done.’ So, he thinks Russia’s sort of scientific integration has been set back 10 or 15 years already. I mean, that's his view. Whereas others I've spoken to, Loren Graham, an American historian of science who studied Russian science and has been talking to Russian scientists, he says many of those are still hoping that they can resume their ties with European and American colleagues where all their research is going on. And they're sort of hoping that this is going to conclude, somehow, and that they'll be able to get back to some semblance of normality. But I think that seems very unlikely right now.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And one place where these sorts of collaborations are particularly important is sort of Arctic science, thinking about climate change. What is happening in this space, and are projects being paused, or what's happening?

Richard Van Noorden

There are eight members of the Arctic Council, and Russia chairs it or currently chairs it. That stopped working. And then seven of them said, we'll continue our work without Russia. And many Arctic researchers have stopped collaborating with scientists in Russia. And some field experiments have said, ‘Well, we're not going to work in the Russian Arctic anymore. We'll pivot to the North American or the European Arctic.’ So, they're making the best of it, but they're struggling slightly because, while you can look at a lot of things using Earth-observing satellites, you don't have the on-the-ground measurements to confirm what the satellites are seeing – things like permafrost and stuff like that – and those data are usually gathered by scientists in Russia and they might not be shared with non-Russian researchers anytime soon. So, our knowledge of what's going on in the Arctic – a region which is heating up at least three times as fast as the global average – looks likely to be hit by this.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And the other big area is, of course, space. What can you tell me about how the war is affecting things here?

Richard Van Noorden

Yeah, the biggest obvious casualty in space is probably ExoMars, which was going to be this Europe-Russia mission. It was going to fly on a Russian rocket and send Europe's first rover to Mars. And that was going to be this year. And ESA, the European Space Agency, has now kicked out its cooperation with Russia, so that's not happening. And that was a €1.3-billion mission. ExoMars still exists, it's there, it's been built, likely to be delayed until 2026, probably more like 2028. And we understand that ESA is probably looking for potentially the help of NASA, but this will eventually involve more costs. You've got to keep the rover there in storage, maybe there'll be a redesign of the landing gear, which Russia was supposed to have designed. So, that's the big, obvious casualty. Everyone's very interested as well in the International Space Station, born in the 1990s, between the US and the Soviet Union as was, and now run by the US, Europe, Japan, Canada and Russia. And the head of the Russian Space Agency, Dmitry Rogozin, had threatened to pull Russia out, but he was then dismissed from his post this month. And before that happened, the agency released a photo of cosmonauts on the ISS holding flags of Luhansk and Donetsk, the territories that Russia occupies in Ukraine. But for all that, astronauts and cosmonauts have continued going back and forth to the ISS. And perhaps that's just because of the interrelations of the station because it's completely inter-reliant. The American side provides electricity for the Russian side. The Russian side provides the ability to boost the orbit so it doesn't burn up in the atmosphere. So, they're completely dependent on each other, and maybe that's why that very interesting collaboration in space is still going apparently as yet unaffected.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

Well, as we record, there are reports coming in that Russia may well drop out of the International Space Station, but at this stage, it’s unclear what exactly will happen. Another big unknown is energy. You mentioned earlier that from Nature’s perspective, this is a story about finance and energy, and those energy concerns also add worries about the climate. What are researchers saying to you when you speak to them?

Nisha Gaind

I think the overall immediate worry is that decarbonisation efforts will be disrupted because of the fact that many European countries, especially Germany, are trying to wean themselves off Russian gas, which they have been using for decades. And so, certainly in the immediate term, a lot of researchers and climate scientists in particular are simply worried that things like coal-fired power and other sources of fossil fuels will increase. And that knocks off the world's agenda to try and mitigate climate change.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And another sort of interrelated part of that is thinking about food security as well. Ukraine and Russia are both massive exporters of much of the world's food. What are researchers saying about food security and the sort of fallout from the war?

Richard Van Noorden

Well, they are as worried as you would imagine, and António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, he said back in April that the war could throw as much as one fifth of humanity, 1.7 billion people, into poverty and hunger on a scale not seen in decades. And as we're talking this week, there's discussion about whether some of the grain that's in Odessa can be released, or this agreement was made and then Russia immediately sent missiles into Odessa. So, that's going to be really important, especially when it comes to whether many countries in Africa can get the food that they're relying on. But this also, of course, is coming at time when we've got the COVID pandemic, we've got the climate crisis as well, and Guterres, he's talked that we're talking about ‘a lost decade of development’, as he put it. Lots of progress that we had made towards those sustainable development goals of the United Nations, things like sanitation, access to water, getting maternal mortality rates down, researchers are very worried and they're sort of seeing a reversal in many of these global health indicators. Again, the only thing I think that might be a sort of interesting note to come out of all of these quite depressing events is that studies on overlooked areas of research, like food security, are suddenly getting way more attention, which they really had always deserved. So, studies on how to efficiently use fertiliser and on alternatives to inorganic fertiliser, suddenly, they're in vogue. And this June, US President Biden announced a global fertiliser challenge to raise money for this field. And this is something that's just often been ignored and just assumed, we're fine. And this shock to food security just focuses much more interest on it.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And so, I want to end by thinking a little bit about the future. Obviously, we cannot tell what the future will be. But there is almost sort of a realignment going on in the sciences. Are we going to end up with sort of two sciences – Russia-aligned and autocratic and Western-aligned and democratic – and what could be the consequences of this on global science?

Nisha Gaind

One of the initial things that researchers were looking for is whether Russia would start collaborating more closely with the major nations of the world that haven't openly condemned the war, those being China, India, Brazil, and Russia also has a lot of relationships in Africa that it is trying to boost at the moment. We haven't seen a huge amount of evidence yet for the fact that Russia and China are working more closely together. It will probably take time for those sorts of collaborations to flourish if they do. But we certainly anticipate that there will be some kind of divide in global science. But what is interesting to see is whether this chasm, which is affecting science because it comes from a geopolitical action, whether that will deepen with this war, or whether there might be a withdrawal of conflict and whether we might be able to start healing some of these wounds, but it's likely, I think, that we won't see the end of this war for quite a while to come.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

Well, thank you both for what has been a thorough and thoughtful discussion of Ukraine and science. Nature’s Take will return, but all that's left to say is thank you both for joining me.

Nisha Gaind

Thanks very much.

Richard Van Noorden

Thank you.