Russian Science Under Sanctions Pressure: New Risks and Development Opportunities

Abstract

With the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine, scientific organizations and Russian science as a whole became the object of sanctions pressure from the collective West. Meanwhile the state of domestic science at the time of aggravation of geopolitical contradictions can hardly be considered satisfactory. Its main problems are well known: chronic underfunding, lack of demand for research results from business, declining positions in world rankings, negative dynamics of scientific personnel and their uneven distribution across regions. As a result of external changes, new risks have appeared for the scientific sphere of the country: the rupture of international relations and the limitation of the flow of new knowledge, modern scientific equipment and necessary supporting materials, the outflow of scientific personnel abroad. The forced growth in demand from business and state structures for domestic developments opens up new opportunities for the science in Russia, but their use requires an appropriate government support. Threats to the country scientific complex are recognized at different administration levels, but the ideas about the necessary actions are contradictory, and the efforts made are not always effective or efficient. This requires the development of measures to support and stimulate scientific activity that are optimal for Russian reality, the implementation of which should become a priority direction of the state policy. There is an obvious need to increase funding for civil science and restore its applied areas, as well as to strengthen the cooperation and coordination of the activities of all scientific structures. Ensuring defense capability and security, achieving technological sovereignty, maintaining the level of education and public health protection in Russia are impossible without progressive development of the scientific sphere.