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Academic Freedom Under the Pressure of War and Authoritarianism: Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine through the Lens of Science at Risk

Science at Risk has released its latest monitoring reports on the state of academic freedom in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. These reports are based on incident monitoring, interviews with scholars, and analysis of open sources. T-invariant compares these reports with one another and with the global Free to Think (FTT) 2025 report on academic freedom, an analytical overview of which we published last year. The new SAR documents provide a more detailed account of the processes unfolding in the three countries affected by war and authoritarianism, allowing us to trace the mechanisms of academic freedom’s degradation.

Academic Freedom is Eroding Even in Democracies: New Report from Scholars at Risk

Each year, the organization Scholars at Risk (SAR) releases the Free to Think report, which acts as a global barometer for academic freedom. The latest edition, published on October 1, 2025, highlights a troubling trend: since 2018, declines in academic freedom metrics have emerged not just in autocracies but also in long-established democracies. The report, covering July 2024 to June 2025, documents 395 attacks worldwide. Although the total numbers show only a modest increase from the previous year, incidents threatening the physical safety of students and faculty have nearly doubled.

What is happening to the vessel Akademik Nikolai Strakhov and to the Russian scientific fleet

In the Kara Sea, for the second week now, a drama has been developing around the research vessel “Akademik Nikolay Strakhov”, which is stuck there. T-invariant describes the broad context of the problem and tells what role Mikhail Kovalchuk can play in the emergency, who tried in the summer to bring the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences into the structure of his Kurchatov Center.

In memoriam astrologiae. Why do academics continue to bury astrology?

The Russian Academy of Sciences issued a memorandum “On the pseudoscience of astrology.” In dark times, even stating obvious things becomes a struggle for normality and resistance to chaos. We did a kind of backstage, telling some interesting facts about the preparation of the memorandum and the work of the Commission.

How the USSR missed the IT revolution.
Episode 1: Cybernetics

Despite its reputation as a scientific and technological superpower, the Soviet Union missed every phase of the 20th century’s information technology revolution. The first episode was a ten-year delay in the conceptual cybernetic revolution. It did not prevent the creation of the first Soviet computers, but led to a lag in subsequent stages.

The Wildlings are already here. Awaiting the White Walkers

Scientists were shocked by a talk at a theological conference by Alexander Kudryavtsev, director of the Institute of General Genetics, in which he actually renounced the science he was supposed to be engaged in. «I will give my vision of the world,» the speaker begins and utters a manifesto of religious fundamentalism that leads to militarism.

Steampunk and a Thinking Crystal

Artificial Intelligence is preparing to supplant copyright. It radically changes the notion of «copy» underlying copyright protection. In fact, the «copy» is hardly distinguishable from the new «original». Will the copyright, born in the age of steam engines, withstand?