More than 600 Russian scientists sign open letter against war with Ukraine

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/more-than-600-russian-scientists-sign-open-letter-against-war-with-ukraine/4015292.article

by based2 • 4 years ago

102 39 4 years ago

chemistryworld.com

based2• 4 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/t2ha70/more_than...

adventured• 4 years ago

I'd like to see it go a step further: brain drain Russia again, as happened after the fall of the USSR. Poach the talent.

Russia has plenty of brilliant, highly skilled people. Get as many of them to abandon the nation as possible (and make their journey to a new home as easy as possible). The US, EU and their allies can easily make this happen.

Confronting Russia obviously has to be a many front effort. Oil and gas are valuable resources, yes, and they get a lot of attention in terms of how to best constrain Russia. A well organized brain drain against the Russian economy would also hurt enormously across the next decade.

nautilius4• 4 years ago

So your thesis is that now, Russia is a land of superior standard of living, where milk and honey flow, but if one could finally make that stop and make citizens struggle after an external force has taken away their good economy, then the Putins would just disappear and everyone would live happily ever after?

Etheryte• 4 years ago

The comment above posits none of that, this is just a baity strawman.

jacquesm7• 4 years ago

No, rather the opposite: you want Russia to be as smart and wealthy as possible. The more a country has to lose the less the chance that they will start wars with their neighbors.

baybal2• 4 years ago

Germany had to be brain drained 3 times, and then destroyed as a nation, and rebuilt to force it to become "normal."

I see rationality in what you say in principle, but the window of opportunity for applying that method was lost in nineties, after the West disengaged from trying to make Russia a normal country, and left it to become a rouge state.

The West stopped propping up democratic politicians in Russia shortly after they felt that "job's done," and, bizarrely to 16 years old me 15 years ago, started working for the anti-democratic camp. What's the point I asked myself? And this was the time when I discovered the "our bastard" theory, practised religiously by some Western politicians.

Similarly to how Putin turned into "our bastard" for the West 20 years ago, NSDAPers were once propped up into power on hopes of getting pliable "our bastards" for major powers in light of their own problems.

ct0• 4 years ago

The risk here is hiring a spy, same applies for hiring Chinese born as well.

HarryHirsch5• 4 years ago

The US, EU and their allies can easily make this happen.

Can they? These days, China looks a much better option for a young ambitious scientist than the US. That said, if the war for control in the Ukraine brings more competition between the major powers I'm all for it, monopolies never did anyone any good, this includes the Wolfowitz doctrine.

lancebeet2• 4 years ago

I apologize if I'm misinterpreting you, but do you honestly believe that China is a more attractive location to a young ambitious scientist than the US? Or is this some sort of a joke that I'm not getting?

skissane• 4 years ago

From a culture and language viewpoint, most Russian scientists would find it much easier to adjust to your average Western country than to China. Plus, Western countries generally have much more experience at integrating immigrants than China does, which suggests they are likely to do a better job at it than China.

fineline• 4 years ago

Some might say that's a part of the problem. After the cold war, many Eastern European states received financial and other support and thrived as western-style democracies while Russia was more marginalised and went through period of economic decline, leading to rise of Putin as president after the "Chechen terrorist" apartment bombings and the demise in all but name of the fledgling democratic system. Parallels with history of Germany after WW1 / Weimar / Reichstag.

Ideal outcome may be that Russia ends up with different leadership after this disaster, and a strong, healthy democracy, with more of a stake in the global order - similar to Germany post WW2. Wishful thinking at this stage perhaps...

sAbakumoff2• 4 years ago

More positive news is that 2 oligarchs close to Putin made public statement against the war:

Mikhail Fridman : https://www.ft.com/content/9b3ab6bb-f782-43fb-8afc-42d937147...

Oleg Deripaska : https://t.me/olegderipaska/372

I guess that sanctions are effective after all.

belter• 4 years ago

The statement from Oleg Deripaska is ambiguous. Also Putin called for negotiations.

But no word from Roman Abramovich...

nindalf• 4 years ago

Abramovich is feeling the heat though. He’s distancing himself from his prize asset - Chelsea Football Club. He put out a statement that he won’t be involved in running the club in a bid to prevent it from being seized by the UK government.

kerneloftruth• 4 years ago

"Effective" means the aggression and seizure stops, and they retreat. Letters from oligarchs aren't changing anything.

They've had this effect: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-orders-nuclear-dete...

sAbakumoff2• 4 years ago

I was always thinking that if Putin listens to anyone at all, then that would be his “friends” from Russian elite, such as Deripaska or Fridman

But I might be terribly wrong, of course, and you are right. Mr. Madman might be out is his mind for a very long time, and he does not listen to anyone.

sorokod• 4 years ago

my translation of Deripaska's tweet:

"Piece is very important! Negotiations should start as soon as possible!"

It is compatible with the official (is TASS official nowadays?) Russian position

https://tass.com/politics/1412389

Hard to tell if it represents a genuine will to back out of a terrible situation or an effort to weaken the Ukrainian resistance. Could be both off course.

jacquesm7• 4 years ago

Meanwhile, Putin just announced that they are increasing the operational readiness of their nuclear arsenal.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/vladimir-putin...

Anybody still feel that this is just a Ukranian or European problem?

mkr-hn• 4 years ago

I think it's a good sign for how I've curated my Twitter feed that everyone seems to understand how "regional" wars can spiral and how much this resembles the early days of the world wars. Add world-ending nuclear arsenals to that, and things get dicey.

jacquesm7• 4 years ago

Effectively we've been in World War III for a week or so but that realization does not seem to want to sink in yet. Europe is quite literally the battlefield of the world, we dodged a bullet in former Yugoslavia and may well dodge another one but it is definitely one of the most scary things I've lived through to date.

Krasnol2• 4 years ago

I hope it is ready so no madman can fire it on accident.

Other than that, I doubt there will be any nuclear action. We'll be back at the Cold War show where the script is: everybody dies and the question is who's first.

jacquesm7• 4 years ago

We are at a cross roads, and what will happen next relies a lot on people that should never have had that much power to begin with.

rambojazz• 4 years ago

It's a EU problem until nukes get involved

RyanShook• 4 years ago

I hope we keep seeing more of the Russian people waking up to what is going on. It’s hard to know what information gets to them or what the public sentiment in Russia really is.

HarryHirsch5• 4 years ago

Did public opinion ever have any influence on high-level politics? In my corner of the US (more Republican than one might think) majority opinion is that the Ukraine is an intra-European matter that US/NATO would be well advised to stay out of.

jacquesm7• 4 years ago

Absolutely, many examples of that historically. Revolutions, mass strikes, protests and elections are all ways in which public opinion has had influence on high level politics.

In my corner of the US (more Republican than one might think) majority opinion is that the Ukraine is an intra-European matter that US/NATO would be well advised to stay out of.

That's for Putin to decide, like it or not. Just like Hirohito decided to bring the United States into WWII.

tssva2• 4 years ago

Care to share the polling results and the polling methodology you used to determine the majority opinion in your corner of the US.

More than 600 Russian scientists sign open letter against war with Ukraine

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