Dear foreign members of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
It is for three weeks that the bloody war started by the Russian Federation has raged in Ukraine. There is not a single location in this country that has not felt the horrors of that war. Peaceful cities, towns and villages are under destroying air raids and artillery shelling, innocent people are dying. As of today, more than 100 Ukrainian children have become the victims of the aggressor, nearly 200 more have been wounded. Dozens of communities are in complete blockade and people are living in a humanitarian crisis – there is no food, water, electricity, heating, no telephone communication.
Civil infrastructure – hospitals, residence buildings, educational and scientific facilities – has been ruined. Scientific institutions of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and other Ukrainian cities have been damaged by Russian bomb and artillery attacks. Endangered are peaceful nuclear objects of energy and scientific infrastructure whose ruining could lead to technological and environmental disaster of not merely regional but of global scope. The enemy bombed the unique nuclear facility of Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, which is used for research in nuclear physics and materials science as well as for producing medical isotopes.
Our scientists – your colleagues – like millions of Ukrainian citizens have to hide in basements and bomb shelters for several days in a row, leave their homes and get evacuated looking for a safe place to live. Those who have remained are risking their lives and continue working under the roar of frequent explosions and howl of air raid sirens. Many of them are volunteers, help to our soldiers, organize the evacuation of civilians or have taken up arms and defend our motherland. Every day, people die, among them are scientists of the NAS of Ukraine. Our Academy has suffered a great and unjustified loss – Russian aggressors have barbarously shot NAS Corresponding Member Vasyl Kladko, a brilliant experimental physicist, who was evacuating his family from an occupied little town near Kyiv.
Today the struggle of the Ukrainian people is not only the struggle for their country but the struggle for the whole civilized world. And our collective mission is united and more important than ever.
I express deep appreciation on behalf of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, all scholars, and my personal gratitude for your support and solidarity with Ukraine, which you have expressed in numerous letters and messages condemning the aggression of the Russian Federation against our country. It is of utmost importance for us to know that the war waged by Russia against Ukraine is getting an adequate assessment of the global scientific community.
We call all scientists of the planet to join forces, to put in the best effort and do everything possible to protect Ukraine, protect Europe and the democratic world from the bloody Russian military aggression against the entire civilized mankind. We will be grateful to all those able to give a helping hand in this time tragic for Ukraine, its science, and the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
President of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, NAS Academician Anatolii ZAGORODNY