When Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation” against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he envisioned a swift victory that would restore Russia’s great power status.

Instead, the invasion has triggered one of the most devastating scientific brain drains in modern history, systematically dismantling the mathematics and physics capabilities that Russia had built over centuries.

What emerges from this catastrophe is a stark illustration of how authoritarian aggression can backfire spectacularly, weakening the very foundations of national strength it purports to defend.

Russia has long prided itself on its scientific heritage. From Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table to Andrei Kolmogorov’s contributions to probability theory, from Lev Landau’s groundbreaking work in theoretical physics to the Soviet space program’s early triumphs, Russian science has produced world-changing discoveries.

The country’s mathematical traditions, in particular, have been legendary as Soviet mathematicians dominated international competitions and made foundational contributions to fields ranging from topology to number theory. This legacy made Russia a global center of excellence in mathematics and physics, attracting international collaboration and respect.

Today, that legacy lies in ruins, scattered across European and American universities and research institutes where Russian scientists have sought refuge from Putin’s increasingly authoritarian regime.

The Great Exodus Begins

The scope of the scientific exodus that began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is staggering. According to reports from multiple sources, at least 2,500 scientists have fled Russia since February 24, 2022, with experts describing the phenomenon as a “disaster” for Russian science. This figure likely represents a conservative estimate, as many departures go unreported and the true scale of the exodus may be several times larger.

Among those who have left are at least 34 physicists and mathematicians from Russia’s most prestigious institutions.2 These are not marginal figures but acclaimed scientists with established careers. Up to a quarter of the departing scientists have citation H-Index scores of 10 or higher a metric indicating successful careers spanning decades of research experience. Many maintained ties to foreign universities, making their departure not just a loss of individual talent but a severing of crucial international networks that had taken years to build.

The human stories behind these statistics are particularly poignant.

Yevhen Makedonsky, a mathematician born in Ukraine’s Melitopol, had built a successful career in Russia, obtaining his PhD from the Higher School of Economics and spending over five years at Skoltech studying representation theory. When Russian tanks began assaulting his hometown, he realized “that the Russia I knew was over, the Third Reich has begun.” He managed to escape Russia in late February 2022, eventually finding refuge at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics.

Vladimir Marakhonov, a physicist who worked at the prestigious Ioffe Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the 1980s and 1990s, left Russia for Finland in September 2022. “We discussed the situation after February 2022 with my colleagues and agreed that a catastrophe and madness is happening,” he explained. His observation about the nature of the exodus is particularly telling: “The trouble is that it is primarily smart people who leave.”

The Institutional Collapse

The brain drain has not affected Russian scientific institutions uniformly but it has struck hardest at the most prestigious and internationally connected universities. The Higher School of Economics (HSE), which Vladimir Putin himself had praised in 2010 as “cutting-edge in every respect,” exemplifies this institutional collapse. The university has lost approximately 700 faculty members since the war began, causing it to plummet almost 100 spots in global rankings, from 305th to 399th position.

The HSE’s decline began even before the invasion, as authorities increased pressure on faculty members who showed insufficient loyalty to the regime. The university received a new rector in 2021 who launched a gradual purge of faculty members. “As his team grew, the pressure within the university was becoming more and more systemic,” recalled Ilya Inishev, a Doctor of Philosophy who worked at HSE from 2010 until 2022. Inishev was eventually dismissed for “serious damage” his antiwar comments “inflicted on the university’s reputation” and moved to Germany in April 2023.

The pattern extends far beyond HSE. Research by Novaya-Europe identified at least 270 university staff members from Moscow and St. Petersburg’s high-ranking universities who have severed ties with Russia since the war broke out. Among these, 195 are considered Russian scientists, while the rest are foreigners who had been working in Russia. The HSE leads with 160 departures, followed by St. Petersburg State University with 35, and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology with 32.

These figures represent only the verified cases from open sources. The actual number is likely much higher, as many departures are not publicly documented. Former HSE Professor “Mikhail” (a pseudonym) noted that in his department, “all PhDs, except for one, all senior researchers, and foreigners” eventually left.

The International Scientific Boycott

Putin’s invasion did not just trigger an internal exodus. It also provoked an unprecedented international scientific boycott that has systematically isolated Russian institutions from global research networks. The response was swift and comprehensive, affecting everything from major international collaborations to routine academic exchanges.

One of the most symbolic casualties was the $300-million Skoltech program, a joint initiative between MIT and Russian partners that represented one of the most ambitious East-West scientific collaborations of the post-Cold War era. The program was dissolved within one day of the invasion, with no foreseeable restart in the future. This termination eliminated not just funding but also the institutional framework that had enabled hundreds of researchers to collaborate across national boundaries.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which had served as a bridge between East and West even during the darkest days of the Cold War, made the unprecedented decision to bar all Russian observers and terminate the contracts of approximately 1,000 Russian scientists or about 8% of its workforce when their agreements expired. This move was particularly significant given CERN’s historic role as a meeting place for scientists from opposing blocs, a function it had maintained even during the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979.

The boycott extended across the academic spectrum. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, various Australian universities, and the European Association of Universities, which unites 850 institutions, announced the complete cessation of all interaction with Russian organizations. Nordic countries, Finland, Germany, Poland, Denmark, and Norway, refused to continue joint research and education programs. Mathematical societies in several countries announced they would not participate in the International Congress of Mathematicians, which had been scheduled to take place in St. Petersburg in July 2022 but was forced to go virtual instead.

The isolation extends to research infrastructure and publishing. Many firms outside Russia, particularly in the European Union, have refused to supply scientific equipment to Russian institutions for fear of violating sanctions. Access to Western scientific journals has been compromised due to financial problems and the devaluation of the ruble, with the Russian Foundation for Basic Research unable to pay subscription fees to major publishers like Springer.

The Quality of the Loss

What makes this brain drain particularly devastating for Russia is not just its scale but its quality. The scientists who are leaving represent the most internationally connected and productive segments of the Russian research community. This follows a pattern observed in other historical episodes of scientific migration: the most talented and networked individuals are often the first and most able to leave.

Research on software developers which is a closely related high-skilled community illustrates this dynamic clearly. Analysis of GitHub data shows that by November 2022, 11.1% of Russian developers had listed a new country, compared with only 2.8% of developers from comparable countries not directly involved in the conflict. More tellingly, the 11% of developers who left Russia had been responsible for 20% of the country’s international collaborations in the software development community.

This pattern reflects a broader truth about brain drain: it is not random.

Those who leave tend to be better connected both domestically and internationally. In the global collaboration network, 43.0% of departing developers had ties with colleagues in other countries, compared with only 24.3% of those who remained. The same dynamics likely apply to academic researchers, meaning that Russia is losing not just individual scientists but the crucial nodes that connected Russian science to the global research community.

The emigrants themselves represent a remarkable pool of human capital. Approximately 80% have higher education and work in fields requiring intellectual expertise, including IT, data analysis, business, science, and culture. They tend to be young, between 20 and 40 years old, representing the demographic cohort that would normally form the backbone of Russia’s future scientific leadership.

Historical Parallels: The Nazi Germany Precedent

The current Russian scientific exodus bears uncomfortable similarities to one of history’s most catastrophic episodes of scientific self-destruction: Nazi Germany’s purge of Jewish scientists in the 1930s. The parallels are not just metaphorical for they offer concrete insights into the long-term consequences Russia may face.

When Hitler declared he would rid German universities of Jews even if it meant “the annihilation of contemporary German science,” he achieved exactly that outcome. The 15% of German physicists who lost their jobs were the country’s most productive researchers, accounting for 64% of all physics citations in Germany. This was not just a loss of individual talent but a systematic dismantling of the research networks and institutional knowledge that had made German science a world leader.

Many of these displaced scientists found refuge in Britain and the United States, where they continued their groundbreaking work. Several would play crucial roles in the Manhattan Project which was a bitter irony that saw Germany’s scientific talent contributing to the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton became a particular beneficiary, housing scientists like Kurt Gödel, Hermann Weyl, and Albert Einstein.

The economic research on such episodes confirms their long-lasting impact. Studies of academic emigration from Nazi Germany and deaths of academics during World War II show that these shocks diminished local research productivity for decades. Human capital, unlike physical capital, cannot be quickly rebuilt or replaced. The loss of experienced researchers creates cascading effects: fewer mentors for graduate students, weakened research networks, reduced institutional knowledge, and diminished capacity to train the next generation of scientists.

The Authoritarian Escalation

What makes the current Russian brain drain particularly tragic is that it appears to be accelerating due to the government’s own actions. Rather than recognizing the damage being inflicted on Russian science and taking steps to retain talent, the Putin regime has doubled down on policies that actively drive scientists away.

Since 2015, at least a dozen Russian physicists have been arrested on charges of “high treason” for the simple act of working with foreign colleagues or publishing in foreign journals. These scientists were not directly involved in weapons work but their transgression was conducting research with international partners, the very activity that had historically made Russian science strong. The message to the scientific community could not be clearer: international collaboration, the lifeblood of modern research, is now grounds for imprisonment.

The Russian authorities have explicitly embraced what they call a policy of isolationism from the international scientific community, deliberately echoing the practices of the Soviet Iron Curtain era. This represents a fundamental reversal of the policies that had allowed Russian science to recover from the post-Soviet collapse and begin reintegrating with global research networks.

The pressure extends beyond formal arrests to systematic institutional harassment. Universities have been purging faculty members who express opposition to the war or insufficient enthusiasm for government policies. The HSE alone shut down at least six departments in the 18 months following the invasion. Faculty members report an atmosphere of fear and suspicion that makes serious research increasingly difficult.

The Economic Dimensions

The brain drain occurs against the backdrop of a broader economic crisis that had been undermining Russian science even before the war. Since 2008, funding for scientific research as a percentage of GDP has stagnated at around 1% for more than a decade. While Russia ranked ninth globally in absolute Research and Development expenses in 2020, it lagged far behind: 12.1 times behind China and 15 times behind the United States, with the gap continuing to widen.

Salaries for researchers remain dismally low. A senior researcher earns an average of 26,000 rubles (about €280) per month, while a professor earns 36,000 rubles (€390). Despite presidential decrees mandating salary increases to 200% of regional averages, no additional funding has been allocated to achieve this goal. Universities have responded by converting scientists to part-time positions, a bureaucratic sleight of hand that meets the letter of the presidential decree while actually reducing researchers’ total compensation.

The war has exacerbated these underlying problems. International sanctions have made it increasingly difficult to import scientific equipment, cutting Russian researchers off from the tools they need to conduct competitive research. The collapse of the ruble has made international travel for conferences effectively impossible for most researchers. Even basic access to scientific literature has become problematic as institutions struggle to pay subscription fees to international publishers.

The International Response: Selective Support

Numerous Western countries and institutions have launched programs to aid displaced Russian scientists, recognizing the humanitarian implications and the chance to bolster research capabilities in the West. These initiatives include research grants, fellowships, and institutional support expressly tailored for scientists fleeing Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine due to the war.

The London Institute for Mathematical Sciences did establish the Arnold Fellowships, which are three-year research positions specifically aimed at mathematicians and theoretical physicists from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. The program is named after Vladimir Arnold, the renowned Ukrainian-born Russian mathematician, and aims to “support Russian scientists, at the expense of Russian science,” emphasizing the strategic intent to attract talent and weaken hostile institutions. The Institute’s official announcement highlights the notion that “Russia’s brain drain is Britain’s gain,” reflecting the dual humanitarian and strategic motives behind such fellowships.

The European Union has publicly discussed repurposing frozen Russian assets, with figures as high as €320 billion under investigation for reconstruction efforts and potentially for supporting displaced researchers in Europe. These proposals remain under active consideration, with debate on the allocations and legal mechanisms, but they underscore the scale and intent of Western support for affected scientific communities.

National research bodies in various countries including Germany, France, and the United States have established formal programs to help displaced scientists, offering temporary positions, funding, and long-term career integration opportunities. These efforts provide both immediate humanitarian relief and contribute to sustaining scientific productivity beyond Russia’s borders.

Long-term Consequences

The full impact of this scientific exodus will likely take decades to manifest, but the early indicators are ominous for Russia. Research output has already begun to decline measurably. International collaborations with Russian scientists fell by 34% by 2024 compared to 2021 levels. The number of scientific articles published by Russian researchers, which had been declining even before the war, is expected to continue its downward trajectory.

More fundamentally, Russia is losing its capacity to train the next generation of world-class researchers. Graduate programs are being disrupted by faculty departures, while the most promising students are increasingly likely to seek opportunities abroad. This creates a vicious cycle: as the quality of Russian research institutions declines, they become less attractive to both domestic and international talent, further accelerating the brain drain.

The geographical distribution of emigrants suggests that many of these departures may be permanent. The United States is by far the most popular destination among Russian researchers, while significant numbers have also settled in Germany, Canada, and other Western countries. Greater distances impose significant costs on collaboration and communication, making it unlikely that these scientists will maintain strong ties to Russian institutions even if political conditions improve.

Russia’s loss is manifestly the world’s gain. A study titled “The Great Exodus: A Portrait of New Migrants from Russia” found that about a quarter of Russian emigrants already speak the language of their new country or are making significant efforts to learn it, suggesting successful integration into their host societies.9 Many are already thriving in their new environments, contributing to research programs and institutions that compete directly with Russia.

The Geopolitical Implications

The scientific brain drain represents more than just an academic problem. It has profound implications for Russia’s long-term geopolitical position. Modern military capabilities increasingly depend on advanced technologies that require sophisticated scientific research and development. The hypersonic weapons that Russia has deployed in Ukraine, for example, rely on precisely the kinds of physics research that the country is now losing the capacity to conduct at the highest levels.

More broadly, scientific prowess has become a key indicator of national power in the 21st century. Countries that lead in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced materials, and other cutting-edge fields will have decisive advantages in both economic competition and military conflict. By systematically dismantling its scientific capabilities, Russia is weakening its position in the very domains that will determine great power status in the coming decades.

The irony is particularly acute given Putin’s stated goal of restoring Russia as a great power. What he done is return Russian science to the Brezhnev years and the complaints of leading scientists like Andrei Sakharov.

The invasion of Ukraine was ostensibly launched to prevent Western encroachment and reassert Russian influence. Instead, it has accelerated Russia’s relative decline by driving away the human capital that represents the foundation of genuine national strength in the modern era.

Conclusion: The Price of Authoritarianism

Putin’s war in Ukraine has inflicted many costs on Russia, from economic sanctions to international isolation to military casualties. But perhaps none will prove as enduringly damaging as the scientific brain drain that began on February 24, 2022. In triggering the exodus of thousands of Russia’s most talented researchers, the invasion has achieved something that decades of Western pressure could never accomplish: the systematic weakening of Russian scientific capabilities from within.

The tragedy extends beyond Russia’s borders. Science is fundamentally a cooperative enterprise that benefits from the free exchange of ideas and the collaboration of talented individuals regardless of nationality. The barriers that now separate Russian scientists from their international colleagues represent a loss for human knowledge as well as a setback for Russia specifically.

Yet the responsibility for this catastrophe lies squarely with the Putin regime’s choices. By launching an unprovoked war of aggression, by persecuting scientists who maintain international contacts, and by embracing isolation over integration, Russia’s leadership has chosen policies that inevitably drive away scientific talent. The brain drain is not an unfortunate side effect of the war. It is the predictable consequence of authoritarianism applied to the inherently international enterprise of scientific research.

The mathematicians and physicists now working in European and American universities represent more than individual success stories. They are living proof that human talent transcends national boundaries and that the pursuit of knowledge cannot be constrained by authoritarian regimes. Their exodus from Russia and integration into Western institutions represents both a strategic victory for democratic societies and a powerful demonstration of the self-defeating nature of Putin’s imperial project.

As Russia continues to pay the price for its leader’s miscalculations and his pseudo-Tsarism, the global scientific community has gained an influx of talented researchers whose contributions will advance human knowledge for decades to come.

The only question is whether Russia will recognize the magnitude of its loss before it becomes irreversible or whether Putin’s war will be remembered as the moment when Russia chose isolation over excellence and authoritarianism over the free exchange of ideas that makes science possible.