Address of Ukrainian sociologists to the international sociological community regarding the war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine
Dear colleagues!
Ukraine is defending itself day by day in the war intervention by the putin regime on the territory of a sovereign democracy in Central Europe.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces, territorial defense, and ordinary citizens are showing courage and heroism in this war that is damaging our lives and country daily.
The aggressor is conducting missile and artillery shelling of civilians and civilian infrastructure, using weapons prohibited by international conventions. Peaceful civilians, our women, and children are dying under the barbaric shelling of the aggressor. The occupiers seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant zone, seized and shelled the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, the one largest in Europe. Already today, this threatens to repeat the Chernobyl disaster on a much larger scale.
People of goodwill must stop this war, stop the bloody dictator putin.
With this appeal, we respond to numerous warm letters of support from our colleagues and their questions on how they can help us.
We do not ask, we demand:
- to find the arguments - scientific, moral, pragmatic - in support Ukraine's request to the governments of Europe and NATO for no-fly zone over our territory. It will save thousands of lives.
- to strongly call on Russian scholars to take collective and individual responsibility and to express publicly their position on the immediate stop the war, present it by any of actions and protests.
- to act immediately on debunking Putin's ideology and propaganda - both in Russia and in the West. Sociologists, who are always professionally grounded on facts, must fulfill their important educational mission in truthfully informing the citizens and governments of their countries about this war.
- We call on all Western and European universities to stop and ban partnerships and, above all, financial ties with Russia - in particular, to block access of its institutions to scientometric databases and scientific publications, to stop funding grant programs for Russian citizens, to boycott any attempts to hold scientific events conferences, symposiums, etc. in the territory of the Russian Federation.
Support Ukrainian sociologists in word and action. We, our people, our country need this very much now!
With sincere faith in our common victory!
Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
Sociological Association of Ukraine
SEE: Letter from Ukrainian Sociologists to international sociological community