CERN prepares to expel Russian scientists, but won’t cut ties completely

Europe’s particle physics laboratory CERN will expel hundreds of scientists affiliated with Russian institutes on November 30, unless they relocate to institutions outside the country. The date marks the official end of the lab’s cooperation with the Russian Federation, following CERN’s decision to cut ties with the country after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

But tensions over CERN’s relationship with Russia remain among researchers, as the organization will continue to work with Russia-based scientists through an agreement with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), an intergovernmental center in Dubna, near Moscow. JINR’s agreement with CERN is separate from Russia’s. The decision not to sever ties with the lab has divided researchers, some of whom point to its relationship with the Russian state, which continues its deadly war in Ukraine.

The countries that maintain investigative relations with Russia despite Ukraine

It is “a big mistake” to include scientists affiliated with JINR in CERN projects, said Borys Grynyov, director of the Institute for Scintillation Materials in Kharkiv, Ukraine, who represents Ukraine as an associate member on the CERN Council, the organization’s governing body.

Neither the JINR nor the Russian Ministry of Science responded to Nature‘s requests for comment. CERN spokesman Arnaud Marsollier says: “The CERN Convention is very clear about the fact that we do peaceful fundamental research.”

Russia’s departure could be painful for CERN, based near Geneva, Switzerland, which was founded after World War II to bring nations together for the peaceful pursuit of science. CERN began collaborating with the Soviet Union in 1955. Although Russia was never a full member state — and its observer status is now suspended — hundreds of scientists affiliated with Russian institutes contribute to independent experiments at its flagship particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Collaboration cancelled

In 2022, CERN’s council responded swiftly to Russian aggression in Ukraine, condemning the deaths caused by what it called the “unlawful use of force” in the conflict and calling into question the involvement of Russia’s ally Belarus. The lab imposed restrictions on scientists traveling and moving materials between Russia and CERN. And it pledged to terminate agreements with Russia and Belarus when they expired, a decision formalized in December 2023. CERN’s agreement with Belarus expired on June 27, terminating the contracts of about 20 researchers. And as of December 1, scientists affiliated with Russia will no longer be able to access the CERN site and must surrender any French or Swiss residence permits they hold.

Experiments will feel the loss of Russian expertise, says Hannes Jung, a particle physicist at Germany’s Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg and a member of CMS, one of the LHC’s key experiments. “It will leave a gap. I think it’s an illusion to believe that you can easily fill that gap with other scientists,” he says. Jung is a member of the Science4Peace Forum, an organization that campaigns against restrictions on scientific collaboration and argues that collaborations with Russian scientists should continue.

Data points to changing scientific collaborations in Russia after a year of war

Others say the impact of Russia’s departure has been softened by the two years researchers have had to prepare. LHC experiment workers have helped “essential” scientists who wanted to stay find positions at institutes outside Russia. Marsollier estimates that about 90 scientists have moved from Russian to non-Russian institutes since 2022, with fewer than 20 still looking for a new home.

“If you really wanted to stay and you could prove that you could do something (scientifically), there were a lot of opportunities in the last two years,” says a Russian physicist working on an LHC experiment, who worries about speaking out and wishes to remain anonymous. The physicist changed his affiliation in 2022, after his institute published a statement supporting Russia’s war.

The Russian funding agencies and institutions contributed about 4.5% of the combined budget of the LHC experiments; this is now covered by other members of the collaborations. The loss of Russia’s expected contribution to the High-Luminosity LHC, a high-intensity upgrade scheduled for 2029, will cost CERN an additional 40 million Swiss francs (US$47 million).

Science vs. Politics

Since the invasion, CERN’s management has had to balance calls from some member states to isolate Russian institutions with those who argue that science should operate outside of politics. In 2023, CERN resolved a stalemate over how to acknowledge the contributions of Russia-linked scientists in papers by agreeing to list their names alongside their Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID).

Some researchers believe that CERN has not gone far enough in distancing itself from Russia. In June, the CERN Council, made up of representatives from member states, voted against ending cooperation with JINR. Restrictions on the relationship will apply, such as banning joint scientific meetings or new projects. But ongoing work for some 270 JINR-affiliated scientists at CERN will continue.

Others point out that CERN has gone further than many other scientific organizations. ITER, the world’s largest nuclear fusion project near Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France, has kept Russia as a member country because the organization’s design makes it effectively impossible to oust the nation. Europe’s XFEL, an x-ray free-electron laser in Schenefeld, Germany, has temporarily barred scientists affiliated with Russia from using its facility but still maintains official partnerships with Russia.

Jung and other members of Science4Peace see the decision to continue working with JINR as positive. “I feel like it marks a small change in the way things are being done,” Jung says. The organization has called for JINR’s ongoing cooperation agreement to be a channel for communication with Russian scientists on a broader scale.

Ukrainian physicists, however, are strongly opposed to the collaboration, citing JINR’s ties to the Russian government, which provides more than 80% of the funding.

Grynov is concerned about the JINR arrangement, saying it ensures that a government-affiliated laboratory retains access to the latest scientific and technological information that could somehow support the war effort.

Although JINR’s constitution states that its research must be for peaceful purposes, the lab has close ties to the Russian military, say Grynyov and Tetiana Hryn’ova, a Ukrainian physicist at France’s national research agency CNRS who is working on the ATLAS experiment. She points to JINR brochures that highlight research with military applications, such as fuel cells for drones, and documents on the institute’s website that show collaborations with companies in Dubna that produce rockets.

CERN cooperates with institutes in other countries that have separate military ties. But “if rockets made in Dubna now fall on the heads of my colleagues, it becomes more unacceptable,” Hryn’ova says.