On May 19, the Commission on Combating Pseudoscience of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) issued a statement urging the exclusion of homeopathic drugs from mandatory clinical guidelines. It seemed like a routine step in the defense of scientific integrity, yet a document drafted in February waited three and a half months for publication. The reason lies in a fierce struggle within the RAS and beyond, where the homeopathic industry, backed by influential figures in the State Duma (Russia’s lower house of parliament) and top officials within the RAS, is mounting an offensive. From censorship to political insinuations about “NATO conspiracies,” T-invariant uncovers how pseudoscience is encroaching on science in Russia.

Harvard University refused to obey the Trump administration and sued the officials. Why is the whole world watching this conflict? What is being demanded of the university? What is Harvard defending? What role did DEI policy and anti-Semitism play in the attack on academic freedom? T-invariant talked to Eugene Shakhnovich, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University.

Fellows of the prestigious Fulbright program faced big problems after the program’s sponsors (IIE and Cultural Vistas) were recognized as undesirable organizations in Russia in March 2024. T-invariant reported on this in detail last summer. What is happening today with young scientists from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine?

Alexei Soldatov, a well-known scientist and entrepreneur, one of the founders of Runet, who was convicted in a case of abuse of power, has been sentenced to Ryazan region. In an interview with T-invariant, his son Andrei Soldatov, editor-in-chief of the website “Agentura.ru”, told what may be behind his father’s case, what FSB supervisors at large enterprises and universities are really doing, and why in Russia, despite the large number of convicted scientists and representatives of the IT-sphere, there are no sharashki 2.0.

A verdict is expected imminently for Sergei Abramov, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). On March 25, he turned 68, but the last two years have been erased by the FSB: Abramov stands accused of financing extremism—specifically, seven donations totaling 7,000 rubles to Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). The trial, now dragging on for nearly a year, has seen the scientist attempting to prove that the prosecution failed to establish who authorized the payments or their intended recipient. He has also challenged the validity of a linguistic analysis of his Facebook posts conducted by a bachelor’s-degree law graduate. Abramov faces up to eight years in prison, and his family fears he may not survive incarceration. 

Behind the facade of Putin’s discussions with technocrats about the threats posed by Western generative chatbots lies the full-scale militarization of Russia’s artificial intelligence sector. T-invariant examines how Russian forces are already using AI to guide kamikaze drones via optical navigation (immune to enemy electronic warfare), refine combat tactics with drone swarms, overhaul military logistics, and repurpose cryptography—now geared more toward cyberattacks than data protection.

The latest censorship scandal in Russia involves historian and political scientist Konstantin Pakhlyuk’s book “In Search of Russian Antiquity”, which was removed from the website of the publishing house “Novoye Literaturnoye Obozreniye” following a complaint by the Orthodox activist group “Sorok Sorokov”. The group accused Pakhlyuk of criticizing the Soviet Army in his social media posts, alleging he had accused it of violence against civilians and liberated concentration camp prisoners. Shortly before this, T-invariant spoke with Pakhlyuk about the most significant shifts in the historical memory of World War II.

During the trial of physicist Oleg Kabov, it emerged that the criminal case had been initiated by two of his former students. One of them, after threatening Kabov, joined the FSB (Federal Security Service of Russia), after which the second student filed a denunciation against his former scientific supervisor. It also became clear that the embezzlement case lacked any financial evidence, and that the allegations regarding the falsification of Kabov’s scientific results had been manufactured by FSB officers. The prosecution is demanding a seven-year prison term, a significant fine, and a three-year prohibition on conducting scientific research. The defendant has asked the judge to reopen the investigation. The judge must now decide whether there is sufficient information to deliver a verdict or if the case should be sent back for further investigation.

The draft law granting the FSB oversight over scientists’ international collaborations appears to be more essential for the Ministry of Education and Science and the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) than for the security service itself. However, the document’s drafters failed to account for the substantial resources required to develop and maintain these “government services for monitoring scientists.” It is already clear that, in its current form, the new legal framework will complicate operations for all parties involved: researchers, officials, and law enforcement. This conclusion was reached by T-invariant after analyzing the proposed amendments to the federal law “On Science and State Scientific and Technical Policy,” along with accompanying assessments from federal agencies, the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center, and the RAS.