Within a few days of the Russian military’s invasion of Ukraine late last month, about 30 faculty and students from a university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, began to pen an open letter. They described their antiwar sentiments, stated support for colleagues who are openly protesting and opposing Russian’s attack on Ukraine, and denounced the new “Iron Curtain” being erected by the Russian government to block sources of information and news within the country.
“We argued about wording and grammar details,” Alexandra* (not her real name), a mathematician and one of the letter’s authors, tells The Scientist in Russian. She and her colleagues were far from alone: other groups of academics within Russia had already begun releasing public letters condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Alexandra and her colleagues mulled over their letter for a few more days. Then, on March 4, one week after the start of the invasion, the Russian ...
