Statement of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
This day will forever remain one of the most tragic in the Academy's more than century-long history.
The Russian strike has claimed the lives of two people. The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine extends its deep condolences to their families and loved ones. The entire academic community shares in this loss.
The Presidium building sustained significant damage. Fire engulfed the upper floors. People were cut off by the flames and forced to escape through the windows.
People at the windows of a burning building in the center of a peaceful European city: within hours, the entire world witnessed the horror unfolding at 54 Volodymyrska Street. In the 21st century, these images evoke the most harrowing scenes of terrorist attacks, where the ordinary day of peaceful people instantly turns into a fight for survival.
We have no right to get used to this.
The strike on the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is not just damage to another building during the Russian war.
This is a strike against people. Against science. Against the country’s intellectual potential. Against the very idea that knowledge, research, and the pursuit of truth should serve life, not its destruction.
A Russian drone struck the very heart of Kyiv, hitting a building that has been one of the symbols of Ukrainian science for over a century. The building at 54 Volodymyrska Street became an academic site back in 1919 and has been inextricably linked to the history of the Academy ever since.
This strike also carries a particularly poignant historical symbolism. The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was founded in 1918 under Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky, when Ukraine was fighting for the right to statehood and establishing its own national institutions. More than a century later, Russia is using weapons to strike at one of those institutions - at Ukrainian science as an integral part of independent Ukraine.
Russia is once again attempting to destroy what embodies the independent Ukraine: its intellect, culture, historical memory, and the ability to determine its own future.
The strike on the Academy is part of a much broader Russian campaign of terror against Ukraine’s civilian population, its universities, research institutions, libraries, museums, hospitals, and residential buildings.
Science has become a target. And the world has seen it.
We are grateful for the strong international solidarity we felt within the very first hours following the strike. European leaders, international organizations, and leading global academies and research institutions condemned the Russian attack on the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Their statements conveyed a key message: a strike against the Academy is a strike against science, and Russia must be held accountable for its crimes.
We are grateful to all our international partners, Ukrainian colleagues, rescuers, medical personnel, journalists, and every single person who stood by us during these terrible hours -calling, writing, offering help, and providing support.
Today, international solidarity with Ukrainian science must be backed by concrete decisions.
The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine appeals to the global scientific and academic community, calling for concrete actions.
Science cannot exist apart from moral responsibility. There can be no ‘ordinary scientific cooperation’ with a state that kills people and destroys the research institutions of another country.
Back in 2022, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine terminated its cooperation with Russian scientific organizations and scientists. That same year, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) suspended the membership of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the suspension has not been lifted since. Today, the Russian Academy of Sciences is not part of the ALLEA European academic community, which brings together around 60 academies from approximately 40 European countries.
The strike on September 28 once again demonstrated why such a position remains fundamentally important.
We call upon academies of sciences, universities, research centers, scientific foundations, international scientific organizations, and publishers not to resume or legitimize institutional cooperation with Russian state scientific and educational institutions as long as Russia is waging an aggressive war against Ukraine.
Russian state scientific institutions that, unfortunately, support Putin's aggression cannot return to the international scientific community as if nothing had happened.
There can be no ‘science is above politics’ when science is under armed attacks.
There can be no normalization where terror continues and there is no accountability for it.
We call upon the global scientific community to stand united.
The Russian strike destroyed part of our building.
It claimed human lives.
It left wounds that cannot be erased by repairing walls.
But it did not destroy the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
We will continue to work.
Our scientists will continue their research. Our institutes will continue to generate new knowledge and technologies. Ukrainian science will continue to work for Ukraine’s defense, recovery, development, and European future.
The Academy, established over a century ago alongside Ukrainian statehood, has endured. It will endure this time as well.
We will not be broken.
Ukrainian science will not be destroyed.
Ukraine will not be stopped.
Фото: ДСНС
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