On war ’s second anniversary, Ukraine’s scientific community mourns lost colleagues

Just before daybreak on 2 January, air raid sirens blared in Kyiv—a near-daily occurrence that often passes without incident. Not that day. Explosions resounded across the Ukrainian capital as air defenses attempted to shoot down a rain of incoming missiles, including 10 hypersonic Kinzhals. The detonations woke Natalia Shevtsova, a radioecologist at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine’s (NAS’s) Institute of Hydrobiology. Moments later, a missile slammed into the side of the building where Natalia’s mother, Lyudmila Shevtsova, a prominent biologist, also lived. Lyudmila’s apartment was shattered, and debris blocked Natalia from entering. “I cried, ‘Mama! Mama!’ But she didn’t answer.” Lyudmila Shevtsova is just one of a growing number of Ukrainian researchers killed during the war with Russia, which marks the end of its second year tomorrow. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, at least 100 Ukrainian scientists and scores more students have perished—on the front lines, in mortar and rocket attacks on cities, or murdered by Russian troops . Others succumbed to heart attacks or other ailments because of war-related stress or because medical services are overstretched. Here are vignettes of a few of the scientists Ukraine has lost. Skip slideshow Volodymyr Kozlovskyy as a postdoc at Cornell University in 2...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news