The cooperation protocol between the Kurchatov Institute and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will end at the end of November, and those in charge of the Switzerland-based research center have confirmed the layoff of around 500 Russian scientists.
“The suspension of the cooperation agreement will take effect on November 30 this year,” CERN spokesman Arnaud Marsollier confirmed to the Russian state agency RIA, stressing that most of these 500 employees – mostly engineers and physicists – are not. Now even in Switzerland.
Specializing in particle physics, CERN is one of the world's most advanced laboratories: founded in 1954, it currently has 23 member states and is home to the Higgs boson particle linked to the beginning of the universe. , proved (Big Bang Theory).
Some of these Russian experts worked at the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, but their work has already been distributed to other national scientists.
CERN had already highlighted its intention not to renew cooperation agreements with Russian companies in June 2022 at the start of the invasion against Ukraine. These contracts last for five years and are usually automatically renewed.
Mikhail Kovalchuk, director of the Kurchatov nuclear power company, was very satisfied with the conclusion of the contract. “They are the employees of our company, they are our employees. Indeed, these professionals – whom we have trained and educated – are a gift to our country”; said the head of the Moscow-based Russian Nuclear Energy Center.
Kovalchuk also highlighted that these 500 people share the Kremlin's “ideology”. Communication with Byelorussia's science department will also cease, but only in June of next year.
However, the Foreign Ministry criticized CERN's decision: “It is a politicized and completely unacceptable decision, as it contradicts the spirit of cooperation in science,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
“People were encouraged to report each other”
Russia has “created a suffocating climate of fear in the occupied territories of Ukraine” and “widespread violations of international humanitarian law,” the UN Human Rights Office condemned in a report released today.
After more than 2,300 interviews with victims and witnesses, the document notes that Russia took steps to “impose the Russian language, citizenship, laws, judicial system and education curriculum on the occupied territories”. “They committed widespread violations, including arbitrary detention of civilians, accompanied by torture and ill-treatment, sometimes amounting to enforced disappearance,” the investigators noted, speaking of “general impunity.”
“People were encouraged to report each other, they were afraid of their own friends and neighbors,” added those responsible, highlighting Moscow's efforts to control access to the Internet, mobile networks and Ukrainian television.
At the same time, since the beginning of the invasion it has suppressed expressions of Ukrainian culture and identity – and the report notes that this has had “a certain impact on children.” One example of this is changing the Ukrainian curriculum. The Russian curriculum in many schools, and the introduction of “school textbooks with stories trying to justify the armed attack on Ukraine”.
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> More about pro-Russian school textbooks, but in Italy: “The Ministry of Education announced today that it will investigate complaints about the use in some schools of the country of history and geography textbooks with distortions and false facts about Russia. There are dozens of texts published between 2017 and 2023, which are “Putin's version narrating the events,” said Ukrainian activists. La Repubblica newspaper reported the story.
> Three people were killed and five wounded in an attack by Russian forces on an eight-story building in Kharkiv, northern Ukraine. Local officials said the bombs spread a kilometre-long fire.
> On the other hand, pro-Ukrainian forces continue to attack Russian positions on the border: two dead and two wounded in the Belgorod region. According to the Russian governor, the second attack resulted in another death. Preventive and other security measures of schools will be extended. “We will do everything in our power,” Putin assured the crowd.
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