Ukraine marks the fifth anniversary of the popular uprising that allegedly wrested the country from the clutches of Russia and brought it closer to Europe. But Ukrainian scientists complain that progress is still not visible. It is impossible to modernize the Ukrainian economy without strengthening the research potential. But no one is in a hurry to update the outdated Soviet model of science.
On the anniversary of the popular uprising that wrenched Ukraine out of Russia's shackles and brought it closer to Europe, scholars complain that progress is lagging behind.
Science in Ukraine is in limbo, despite all the promises voiced during the revolution, which put the country into the orbit of the European Union.
National spending on science remains low, public funding is wasted, and low wages prevent talented students from pursuing research in their home country.
“We have been promised changes for years,” laments Natalya Shulga, head of the Ukrainian Science Club. Its organization in Kiev protects the interests of science. “But no real change happened - it’s just a linden tree.”
Euromaidan, or the Revolution of Dignity, preceded by street protests and civil disobedience, led to a change of government in February 2014. Ukraine severed its ties with Russia and elected a pro-European government. The hope has dawned in scientific circles that partnerships with the West will be established and international isolation will end.
Things were promising at first, with the new government vowing to revamp the outdated Soviet-style model of science and to increase spending on research and development. Since 2015, Ukraine has been participating in EU research programs as an associate member, thereby gaining equal rights when applying for EU grants. And in early 2016, the Ukrainian parliament adopted a law on the development of science, technology and innovation.
However, these efforts did not lead to a radical change, scientists say. Public spending on science fell in 2016 to a historic anti-record of 0.16% of GDP and has hovered around that mark since then.
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Lack of funds
The few public funds that are allocated go mainly to research institutes under the wing of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU) - the national center for fundamental research - and many of them are very outdated. In 2019, the Academy will receive from the government almost 5 billion hryvnia (about USD 183 million), and this is almost twice as much as in 2016.
However, Shulga believes that this infusion, with all its relative generosity, will not even be enough to buy modern equipment, such as electron microscopes and spectrometric devices. Ukrainian scientists are still dependent on foreign aid and unable to compete with researchers from wealthy countries.
Patience is gradually running out - especially among the country's young scientists, because they live on a beggarly salary and can barely make ends meet. A Ukrainian graduate student receives from 3 thousand to 4 thousand 800 hryvnia per month, and even a venerable scientist rarely earns more than 13 500 hryvnia.
“Ukraine deserves a science worthy of a developed country,” says Yulia Bezvershenko, a physicist at the Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kiev and co-chairman of the NASU Council of Young Scientists.
Deep roots
The problems of Ukrainian science have deep roots. In the 1990s, during the transition from communism to capitalism, isolation, economic hardship and rampant corruption forced thousands of Ukrainian scientists to go abroad or quit science altogether.
Then, in 2004, a pro-Western president came to power in a wave of mass protests and promised to improve relations with the EU. But science gained nothing from the coup, and soon the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, elected in 2010, decided to end negotiations on an association agreement with the EU, which sparked an uprising on the Maidan.
Something is changing, albeit slowly. A new agency for the distribution of state grants is expected to start operating this year. The National Research Foundation of Ukraine will sponsor individual scientists and entire scientific teams based on an independent expert assessment. The share of national funding for research on a competitive basis is expected to double in the coming years from 20% to 40%, says physicist Anatoly Zagorodny, vice president of NASU. Today his organization numbers over 15 thousand researchers from 160 institutes.
But Ukrainian scientists yearn for more radical change - and faster. Ahead of the presidential elections in March and the parliamentary elections later this year, leading scholars are calling for increased government support. In their opinion, this will not only help science, but also strengthen the country's weakened economy.
“It is impossible to modernize the Ukrainian economy without strengthening its research potential,” Zagorodny notes.
Modernization course
Work is underway to somehow streamline and modernize the Academy of Sciences. For many decades this cumbersome organization has been headed by metallurgist Boris Paton, who turned 100 last year. In Ukraine, as in many former Soviet republics, NASU drives almost all fundamental science, and not individual universities.
440 Ukrainian specialists conducted a large-scale study from 2016 to 2018 and found 21 out of 94 NASU institutes outdated or ineffective. This led to the closure of more than 200 research departments with a total staff of 4.7 thousand employees, Zagorodny explains. He admits that with scarce funding, the academy's staff is greatly bloated and therefore there is little competitive research.
According to him, the lagging units like the Institute of Coal Energy Technologies in Kiev or the Institute of Geotechnical Mechanics in Dnepropetrovsk will either regroup or be completely closed.
Critics note that almost no foreign experts participated in the review, and therefore all the shortcomings of the academy - as well as how far it lagged behind the demands of modern science - could not be fully disclosed.
Alexei Verkhratsky, a neuroscientist at the University of Manchester in the UK, bluntly called the academy "outdated." In his opinion, it would be better to rebuild it from scratch. At the same time, some members of the academy are really moving real science - for example, in astronomy, theoretical physics and mathematics, says Verhratsky. In the 1990s, he headed a research group at the Bogomolets Institute of Physiology. But even these few innovative departments rarely have the money to travel abroad or buy laboratory equipment. The competition laboratories of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine must be merged with Ukrainian universities and thereby combine scientific and teaching activities, Verkhratsky said. So Ukraine will get new research institutes of the European standard.
Zagorodny admits: many institutes are insufficiently equipped and cannot afford to replace outdated equipment with new ones. He again explains such a modest participation of foreign experts by the lack of money.
However, he does not agree with the fact that the academy should be liquidated or merged with the universities. Following the reorganization, priority will be given to technological and socio-economic research in areas such as communications technology, energy, ecology, life sciences and materials science. “A number of institutions and departments really need to be rebuilt, and changes are already underway,” he notes. Moreover, according to him, last year the Academy launched a program for young researchers in the amount of 1 million hryvnias to keep young talents at home, providing them with the opportunity to study science.
Disappointment in the European Union
Ukraine's turmoil also limits the country's participation in EU-funded research programs. As of January, Ukrainian scientists have received only a modest € 19 million ($ 24 million) from the huge European Union Science Foundation Horizon 2020 worth 80 billion dollars, although they compete on an equal footing with colleagues from the EU and other associated member countries. For comparison, Poland and Romania received 340 million and 131 million euros, respectively, although both are smaller than Ukraine.
So far, Ukraine has not won a single grant from the European Research Council, which is the EU's flagship mechanism for funding basic science.
The Ukrainian government has asked the European Commission, which has a service to help countries join EU research programs, draw up a roster of research centers and make specific recommendations for their modernization.
At the January ministerial meeting in Kiev, research experts called on the country's leadership to accelerate the pace of reform to improve the competitiveness of Ukrainian science.
“The Ukrainian government has outlined ambitious plans for reform,” says Luca Polizzi, Science Policy Officer for the Brussels Research and Innovation Commission. "Now all they have to do is make an effort to bring them to life."
Yet many doubt that such pressing change will come from above. “Yes, we can change the system,” says Bezvershenko. "And if we want everything to change, a revolution of dignity has to happen in everyday life too."
Quirin Schiermeier