By Murad Rakhimov | 2025-06-19

TASHKENT -- Before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the number of scholars leaving the country each year was a trickle. Now, it is a torrent.

Since February 2022, the outflow of researchers has reached record levels. A study by Andrey Lovakov of the German Center for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) found that from 2022 to 2024, Russia lost about 0.8% of its actively working researchers each year, based on the Scopus database. That figure is drawn from a total of 856,853 Russian research profiles indexed there.

The pace of academic emigration has surged since the invasion of Ukraine, marking a dramatic shift. Prior to the war, fewer than 0.2% of researchers left the country annually.

"Concerns about academic freedom, the sustainability of international collaborations, and the narrowing space for intellectual dissent" have caused scholars to leave Russia, the study said.

Other motives include "economic sanctions, growing political repression, fear of conscription ... and moral opposition" to the invasion of Ukraine.

The outflow of Russian scholars held steady for 25 years, with a brief reversal in the mid-2010s, according to the DZHW. That changed in 2018 and accelerated sharply in 2022. Between 2021 and 2023, emigration rates nearly quintupled.

The current exodus surpasses even the late 1990s, once considered the peak of Russia's brain drain, say researchers.

Germany, the United States and Switzerland remain key destinations, but interest is growing in Armenia, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan. By contrast, "friendly" nations like China and India have seen little influx.

The losses span nearly all disciplines, with the hardest blows to physics, astronomy, computer science and mathematics, once pillars of Russian science.

Numbers in question

Lovakov calls the trend a sign of crisis, pointing to a weakened academic system, declining innovation and eroding global influence.

"This unprecedented loss of researchers has far-reaching implications," the DZHW study notes, affecting not only Russian science but also global research networks and host countries.

However, Dmitry Dubrovsky, a social scientist at Charles University in Prague, doubted that about 900,000 researchers were working in Russia, as stated in Lovakov's study.

"This is a very strange figure, because it seems to me that the Scopus registration may be doubled. I trust the figures more where Russia has approximately 350,000 researchers and teachers in total, of which 135,000 have at least one international publication," Dubrovsky told Kontur.

While science, technology, engineering and math researchers are in demand in places like Germany, Switzerland and northern Europe, Dubrovsky noted they face hurdles such as security clearance requirements, barriers less relevant to humanities scholars.

"Many scholars leave with the thought that they are not leaving for good but temporarily. They will wait out the war and then come back. But that's a big question: Who will return and when, and who will outlast what?" says Dubrovsky.

War and scholarly peace

Russia's academic community faced pressure well before the 2022 invasion. In 2015, some researchers had to submit their work to Federal Security Service (FSB) officers before publishing or presenting it.

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Since 2018, treason cases against scholars have gained prominence. By mid-2023, courts had handed down seven convictions, with at least four more cases under investigation.

Authorities have also prosecuted scholars under laws banning so-called "fake news about the army."

On May 28, a Yekaterinburg court sentenced Ural Mining University instructor Sergei Abramov, 61, to 10 months of corrective labor over comments made during a lecture.

In a February 1 interview with Novaya Gazeta, philologist Olga Orlova said repression of scholars has intensified in recent years, prompting her team to track cases -- more than 100 so far.

Trials involving scholars are typically closed to the public, with relatives and lawyers bound by non-disclosure agreements, according to Orlova. Colleagues rarely attend.

Since the invasion, major research institutions have distanced themselves from Russia.

On February 25, 2022, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ended its partnership with the Skolkovo Institute. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) later announced it would halt collaboration with about 500 Russia-linked researchers effective November 30, 2024.

'Science will continue to exist somehow'

Many scholars are leaving Russia to avoid job loss or potential prosecution.

The impact is especially stark in fields like advanced economics, history and philosophy, where many luminaries have left, said Orlova.

Half the mathematicians at the Steklov Institute's St. Petersburg branch and almost the entire team at the Higher School of Economics departed in the war's first year, she said, adding that the entire "root system" has been torn out.

The exodus of young, skilled researchers to countries like Germany, the United States and Switzerland has drained Russia's talent pool and severed ties with global academia, said Sanjar Choriyev, a Ph.D. from Karshi, Uzbekistan.

He cited geopolitical factors and mounting restrictions on international collaboration, poor research conditions and growing scientific isolation.

"Emigration is becoming the only way to preserve freedom of scientific thought and gain access to advanced equipment, grants and international projects," Choriyev told Kontur.

As top universities in Europe, the United States and Southeast Asia open previously inaccessible positions, many are seizing the chance to leave.

Without serious reforms to create a more open and competitive research environment, the outflow may become irreversible, say Choriyev.

"In the long term, this will lead to the loss of entire areas of research, a decline in the quality of education and a weakening of Russia's technological sovereignty," he said.

Many promising researchers with publications in top Western journals have left, a Russian scholar, speaking to Kontur on condition of anonymity, confirmed.

"It's hard for me to say whether this will set the humanities back. We still have a lot of bad scholars, but we also have good scholars," said the source.

"In other words, science will continue to exist somehow. But all this has a strong impact on the level of discussion, teaching or science in general."