cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2376675
The Russian government’s spending on research will drop by 25% over the next 2 years under a plan finalized earlier this month by the nation’s Federal Assembly. The budget plan, which sets federal spending levels for 2025 and 2026, marks the latest blow to a Russian scientific community already struggling with international sanctions linked to the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the emigration of talent to other nations.
Funding for applied research, which receives roughly two-thirds of Russia’s federal research spending, will be hit hardest by the cuts, dropping from 458 billion rubles ($4.9 billion) this year to 362 billion in 2025 and 260 billion in 2026, according to a recent analysis by the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge of the Russian Higher School of Economics. Spending on basic research will remain essentially flat, falling slightly from 261 billion rubles to 235 billion in 2025, then increasing to 276 billion in 2026.
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The cuts will likely make it harder for many Russian scientists to remain globally competitive, says geneticist Vladimir Volobuev, head of Russia’s National Center for Genetics Research. But he and some other researchers, as well as the government, hope to replace some of the lost funding with money from industry and other private sources.
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Along with the budget cuts, government officials have hinted that they plan to keep a closer eye on how researchers are spending government funds. Earlier this year, for example, Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov said the government wants to see “results, not publication reports” from research laboratories. Some scientists fear oversight could translate into less freedom to pursue curiosity-driven research. “Scientists cannot achieve success without free creativity, as it is impossible to plan a discovery,” neurophysiologist Olga Martynova, head of a neuroscience laboratory operated by the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Novye Izvestia, a Russian newspaper.
The new budget plan is likely to make it even more difficult for Russian President Vladimir Putin to achieve ambitious science goals he announced shortly after being reelected in March. He vowed to put Russia among the “the top 10 of global leaders by the volume of scientific research and development over 6 years” and to increase research spending to 2% of gross domestic product, up from 0.4% of GDP in 2023.