Scientific Occupation: How Russia Turns Science into a Weapon of Propaganda

Russian propaganda permeates all spheres: sports, art, museums, culture. But there is one less obvious sphere - science. This article will examine how Russia uses its scientific community and research to spread propaganda that the occupied territories of Ukraine are part of Russia.

In 2013, there were about 100 research institutions in Crimea, of which 20 belonged to the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU). There were also 16 universities in Crimea with a total number of students of up to 63,000, nine universities in Donetsk region and eight in Luhansk. Some of these scientific institutions were renowned, such as the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, the Marine Hydrophysical Institute, the Institute of Biology of Southern Seas of NASU, the National Institute of Viticulture and Winemaking "Magarach", the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, the Falz-Fein Biosphere Reserve "Askania-Nova"... Over the past 10 years, many scientific and educational institutions from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine have been relocated to other regions. Some of them had to move again after the full-scale invasion. But a lot of the scientific and research institutions, which are part of, for example, the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine, could not be relocated. Since responsibility for those scientific and educational institutions was divided between the Ministry of Education and Science, NASU and the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine, etc. the full list of institutions has not yet been made public. The damage to the educational and scientific and research infrastructure is estimated in tens of billions of dollars.

The famous quote of Louis Pasteur that “Science knows no country” is taken literally by members of the Russian scientific community, who settled in stolen institutes in Crimea, Donbas, and the occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. The main beneficiary was the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), which appropriated all the institutes mentioned above and added RAS to their names, flaunting its illegal actions. Unfortunately, all this has not affected the reputation of RAS in the international scientific community so far. RAS remains a member of many international organizations. Russian scientists continue to organize international conferences, some of them in the occupied territories of Ukraine, to publish articles in international journals, and to cooperate with foreign institutions. Why is this a problem?

A recent study of databases of scientific publications for 2023 showed that more than 50% of publications from Donetsk and Luhansk and 90% from Crimea claim that they are located in Russia.   An interesting example is Kherson, which was first listed as part of Russia in two publications in 2024, two years after its liberation by Ukraine! Notably, more than a third of  these “incorrect affiliations” are propagated through leading international publishers, such as

Springer Nature/Pleiades (Germany/USA), MDPI (Switzerland), EDP Science (France), IEEE (USA) and Elsevier (Netherlands), IOP Publishing (UK) and others. This happens when one of the authors of the publication or a member of the editorial board of the journal is based in a stolen institute in the occupied territory, or the journal publishes the proceedings of a conference in the occupied territory of Ukraine, or the research described in publication is related to the occupied territory of Ukraine. Some publishers, such as Springer/Pleiades, have in their portfolio more than 200 translated Russian-language journals, which makes them super-spreaders of Russian propaganda.

Such territorial affiliations are regulated by the international standard ISO 3166, which publishers at the moment choose to ignore. Some problematic articles are accompanied by statements such as “While the AAS journals adhere to and respect UN resolutions regarding the designations of territories (available at http://www.un.org/press/en), it is our policy to use the affiliations provided by our authors on published articles.” This example is taken from the “Astrophysical Journal” from the IOP Publishing. Basically, international publishers ask the thief (or people working for the thief) to decide who owns the stolen property and then distribute this information without any due diligence. Would it be surprising that the thief does not mention the real owner?

There is also an example of the opposite position. ISSN is an international organization responsible for the registration of scientific journals, which has had an office in Ukraine since 2021. ISSN numbers are assigned to journals strictly in accordance with the ISO 3166 standard. This means that the assignment of the ISSN numbers to journals in the temporarily occupied territories has been a responsibility of the Ukrainian ISSN office since 2021. As investigated by Suspilne, stolen Ukrainian journals and periodicals in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 have the status “confirmed by the Ukrainian ISSN Center”. That is, the National ISSN Center in Ukraine approves of the theft of Ukrainian journals! After numerous complaints from scientists, the Ukrainian ISSN Center decided to solve the problem radically. It proposed to the international ISSN Center to replace "Ukrainian ISSN Center" with "International ISSN Center". This was a step in the completely wrong direction. Because these journals continue to be published, no enforcement measures have been taken, and no sanctions have been imposed against these journals for spreading propaganda.

The problem goes beyond publishers and journals. There are many examples of scientists from those stolen Ukrainian institutes working abroad, even in Europe. They call their institutes Russian not under the pressure of the occupation, but of their own free will. This is a part of a Russian scientific influence campaign that makes scientists agents of the Russian propaganda machine. One such example is an astrophysicist A. B. Pushkarev, who since 2007 has used data from the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in his publications. In the majority of his 50+ papers published after the annexation of Crimea by Russia, he claims that the Crimean Observatory is located in Russia, as shown in Figure 1. This started when he was based at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn, Germany, where he remained till 2021. To be fair, in some publications the mention of Russia is omitted, most likely following a request from co-authors or the journal. This is a trend that the Ukrainian scientific community should strongly encourage. A. B. Pushkarev’s publications are just one illustrative example and this topic still needs systematic study.

Figure 1. Example of author institute affiliations from an article in Cambridge University Press  [Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 527 (2023) 3, 8784-8792].

It is, of course, not only individual scientists who help to normalize the integration of the occupied territories into Russia, but also scientific organizations. An illustration of this unfortunate trend is the first organization mentioned in Figure 1: the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, which was mentioned in a recent ZN.UA publication. With several hundred collaborating institutes in almost 70 countries around the world and 200 collaborating  institutes in Russia, the involvement of the JINR in the program of integration of the occupied territories of Ukraine has caused a lot of damage. Over the past few years, the JINR has conducted joint scientific projects with stolen institutes, such as Donetsk State University, Donetsk National Technical University, and the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas in occupied Sevastopol. The JINR even received funding for its projects with the latter from the International Atomic Energy Agency. To ensure better integration of the occupied territories into the Russian educational space, the JINR includes Ukrainian teachers from the occupied territories in its Russian-language educational programs both in Dubna and (before the full-scale invasion) at CERN in Switzerland. The JINR also regularly holds international conferences in Crimea; of course, since 2014 these scientists have been welcomed to “Russia”.

All these actions contribute to the recognition of the stolen Ukrainian institutes in the international scientific community as Russian. Russia even signs agreements on their international cooperation. For example, in April 2024, Lucknow University in India signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the “oldest “Russian” scientific institute”, the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas in Sevastopol, which it stole from Ukraine. In September 2024, it was reported that the “V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University” (which Russia created in 2015 from the stolen material base of the Ukrainian Taurida National V.I. Vernadsky University, as well as numerous other Crimean universities and research centers) is in the process of finalizing cooperation agreements with six universities from Iran, China, India, and Sudan. Its medical programs are widely advertised on the Internet targeting foreign students.

These examples emphasize the need for an official strategy by the Ukrainian government, led by the Ministry of Education and Science, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine. A strategy that should ensure wide publicity of the illegal status of the stolen institutes within the international scientific community, in order to prevent any further cooperation with them. This could be done through sanctions from Ukraine and its partners.

First of all, it is critical to create an official list of stolen institutes in the temporarily occupied territories. The list and sanctions are crucial to stem the proliferation of international cooperation agreements that help Russia legalize its ownership of these stolen institutions abroad, and to delegitimize the educational degrees which they issue. The list and sanctions could also help to reduce the number of problematic publications.

It is also important to bring this issue to the attention of the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), which should issue recommendations for journals and publishers on how to treat stolen Ukrainian academic institutions and journals. Ideally, for us, these decisions should ensure that publishers and owners of scientific databases either stop mentioning stolen universities in their publications, because they officially do not exist, or stop labeling Ukrainian territories as part of Russia. It is very important that the request “to label the occupied Ukrainian territories as Ukraine” comes from journals and publishers, and not from scientists themselves. In addition, it is necessary to ensure that the International ISSN Center cancels the registration of stolen Ukrainian journals and media.

The Ukrainian scientific community plays an important role in disseminating this information among its foreign colleagues to ensure their support in this matter. We received very positive feedback following the presentation of our findings in c&en, the journal of the American Chemical Society. But bringing such discussions, for example in international scientific research conferences, is becoming increasingly difficult due to “war fatigue”. We need the support of the Ukrainian government to ensure the possibility of communicating this information in international forums, conferences and seminars.

We will be able to overcome the Hydra of Russian scientific propaganda only through well coordinated effort on our part. Все буде Україна!