Moscow. 14th of April. INTERFAX - President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Alexander Sergeev said that most Academies of Sciences in Western countries have "frozen" contacts with the Russian Federation, in addition, after the introduction of sanctions against the Russian Federation, difficulties appeared in contacts with scientists from China.
"Unfortunately, I can say directly that our Chinese scientific colleagues have also pressed pause, and over the past month we have not been able to enter into serious discussions, despite the fact that we have built excellent cooperation with regular communication," Sergeyev said, speaking at the MGIMO plenary session of the International the conference "Digital International Relations 2022".
At the same time, he noted that "India is a positive example, and we are now actively moving in this direction," planning to discuss the possibilities of cooperation "in pharma, space, digital." In this regard, the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences appealed to the diplomats "to help advance in terms of strengthening scientific contacts with India, including in the field of digitalization."
Sergeyev also said that the Russian Academy of Sciences is experiencing serious difficulties "in the current conditions of the sanctions economic war against Russia." "International scientific cooperation is absolutely necessary to maintain an appropriate level of science (...), and when such an attitude to contacts with Russian scientists is formed in Western countries, of course, it is very difficult to promote our scientific presence in the world scientific space without diplomacy. This is fundamentally important," Sergeyev believes.
He said that Russian researchers continue contacts "with those scientists who want to cooperate and have cooperated and will cooperate with us," but contacts with Academies of Sciences of a number of countries whose leaders refer to the political ban are "disrupted".
"As a result, we now have relations with most academies of sciences, with whom we have cooperated perfectly, exchanged information, held events, and had foreign members on the one hand and on the other hand, relations are frozen. Unfortunately, these are our very important partners - the German Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, and the US National Academy of Sciences. A number of them made statements that we cannot characterize as anything other than aggressive," the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences said.
