It was one of the oldest collaborations of the CNRS in Russia, for about twenty years. Initially a simple joint Franco-Russian research unit in mathematics, the Poncelet interdisciplinary scientific center, based in Moscow, had gradually broadened its fields of investigation to theoretical physics, statistical mechanics and condensed matter. Called to play the role of “cooperation platform and crystallization center for Franco-Russian collaborations”to use CNRS press releases before the war in Ukraine, everything stopped there on February 24, 2022.
“The Russian invasion had been announced overnight. In the hours that followed, from Thursday morning, we talked about it in the management college. On Thursday afternoon, I asked the director of this international research laboratory to repatriate all the staff immediately”, remembers Thierry Dauxois, director of the National Institute of Physics. Patron of one of the ten institutes that make up the CNRS, the physicist recognizes that, “Scientifically, the situation created by the war is difficult”. The CNRS has also repatriated its staff from the French research institute in Moscow and the international laboratory of archaeozoology in Novosibirsk.
No less than sixty-five “structured collaborations” between French and Russian researchers or laboratories, benefiting from specific funding from the CNRS, were stopped overnight by the French research institution. Cooperation on intense lasers could therefore not continue. “It embarrasses researchers, but they understand”affirms Thierry Dauxois, before specifying that “certain individual collaborations have nevertheless been authorized to continue, for example when it comes to finalizing an article”. As for institutional exchanges, they were also interrupted, in accordance with what the CNRS had announced in a press release, from March 2, 2022.
In fact, the sanctions imposed by the European Union against Russia have been declined in France. The conferences, privileged moments of exchange between researchers of the same discipline, have been canceled. Like this important physics symposium which had been scheduled in the wake of the new inauguration of the Poncelet center in Moscow scheduled for June 15, 2022, on the occasion of the renewal of the Franco-Russian agreement.
Do not insult the future
At the European synchrotron in Grenoble (ESRF), designed to welcome researchers from all over Europe to carry out their experiments or observations, no more Russians have come since March 29, 2022. On that day, a month after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the board of directors decided, unanimously by the representatives of the 21 member or associated countries, minus Russia, to suspend the establishment of scientific and technical collaborations with Russian institutes. While Russia contributes 6% to the budget of this particle accelerator 844 meters in circumference, its “access rights” to the ESRF facilities, which were equivalent, are frozen.
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