3/5/2023 0 Comments Boycott advance volume![]() Recommendations ranged from “you would be supporting the war against Ukraine” to “we have never before taken political decisions” and “not giving the talk would be unfair to patients and scientists.” According to one colleague, I would be legally prohibited from engaging in any exchange with Russians. In the present situation, many of us are faced with difficult personal decisions: When a Russian colleague reinvited me in March 2022 to give a virtual talk at a Russian national scientific congress in June, which I had initially gladly accepted pre-pandemic in 2019, I discussed my dilemma with different European science leaders. Shortly thereafter, a peaceful revolution ended the Cold War-now sadly reemerging due to an act of aggression from Russia unimaginable to most of us before 24 February 2022. While touring the golden city of Kyiv as a teenager in the mid-1980s, Soviet police were quick to prevent any attempt to speak to the locals. To my surprise, the world seemingly stopped at this very border in my cousin’s school atlas. Those of us old enough to remember the Cold War are experiencing déjà vu of times thought finished forever: Visiting my father’s family in the German Democratic Republic as a West German child in the late 1970s, antihistamines prevented potential incriminating questions from the sleeping 7-year-old (me) when crossing the border. In parallel, Russians are subjected to a surge of omnipresent propaganda-reinforced by reprisal upon the slightest diversion from the Kremlin’s position. ![]() Six months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, and much of Ukrainian infrastructure was destroyed. ![]()
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