Statement by the RUTA Association on Russia’s Attack on the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

The RUTA Association stands in solidarity with the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and calls on the international academic community to respond decisively to Russia’s continued attacks on Ukrainian civilians, research institutions, and intellectual life.

On 28 September, a Russian drone struck the Praesidium building of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in central Kyiv. The attack was deliberately carried out in broad daylight, while Ukrainian scholars and staff were at work. At least two people were killed, and others were injured. According to various estimates, about two hundred Ukrainian scientists have been killed on the frontlines and in the rear since the start of the full-scale invasion.

The strike on the National Academy of Sciences forms part of a broader campaign of violence against Ukraine and its people. In 2025, civilians in Ukraine suffered the highest number of verified casualties since the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2014. Across Ukraine, Russian attacks continue to kill civilians, destroy homes, schools, hospitals, and critical infrastructure, and force entire communities from their homes. 

The genocidal violence directed against the Ukrainian people is inseparable from a campaign of epistemicide: the systematic destruction, silencing, and devaluation of a people’s knowledge systems and ways of knowing. Epistemicide includes the deliberate destruction of books and publications, research institutions, archives, libraries, and scholars. It also encompasses the systematic targeting of culture, cultural institutions, and artists.

Russia has once again demonstrated that its war against Ukraine is not only a war against lives and territory. It is also a war against Ukraine’s memory, language, culture, and future. A genocidal attempt to eliminate a nation and its identity. 

We stand in solidarity with Ukrainian scholars, librarians, archivists, and cultural workers who carry and produce generations of knowledge about Ukrainian history, culture, language, and self-determination. 

We call upon our colleagues in the wider international academic community to:

• Publicly condemn Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian research and cultural institutions;
• Support Ukrainian scholars and institutions through funding, fellowships, and research partnerships, as well as through speaking and publishing opportunities, in ways that provide space for critical analysis of the systematic injustice of Russian imperialism and opportunities for  scholars who raise such structural concerns to be properly heard;
• Assist Ukrainian efforts to document, preserve, and safeguard Ukrainian archives, collections, and scholarship at risk;
• Refuse to normalise or reproduce Russian imperial narratives in research, teaching, and public debate;
• Refuse to normalise collaboration with Russian institutions and organisations that support, justify, or benefit from Russia’s war against Ukraine, and resist efforts to reintegrate such institutions into international academic and cultural life 
• Support efforts to hold Russia accountable for crimes committed against the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian culture.

RUTA Association for Central, South-Eastern and Eastern European, Baltic, Caucasus, Central, Northern and Eastern Asian Studies in Global Conversation