Russia killed 147 Ukrainian scientists

147 Ukrainian scientists have died since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It is not only about those scientists and graduate students who went to the front, but also about those who died in the rear or in the occupied territories.

Among the Ukrainians who gave their lives in battles for the Motherland, there are two employees of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In the first days of the war, on March 1, the chief engineer of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics Maksym Pavlenko, who joined the territorial defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, died near Kyiv. On July 21, 2022, Vasyl Vdovin, a young scientist and leading engineer of the biomedical chemistry department, who fought as part of the 72nd separate mechanized brigade, died in Donbas.

Bizhan Sharopov, biophysicist and popularizer of science, scientist of the Institute of Physiology named after Bogomolets of the National Academy of Sciences, who fought in the ranks of the Dobrobats back in 2014-2015, and went to the front again in 2022, was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. Bizhan died in the battles in the Kharkiv region, since April 2022 he was considered missing, relatives and colleagues were hoping for a miracle until the end, but in January 2023, thanks to a series of examinations, the death of the soldier was confirmed.

On March 8, 2022, Yuliya Vashchenko, candidate of technical sciences, died – the Russians shot her and her husband in a car near Brovary.

Natalia Loskutova, assistant professor of the Department of German and French Philology at the Mariupol State University, died on the spot from shrapnel wounds in March 2022 in Mariupol. Loskutova, a candidate of philological sciences who researched Ukrainian and French terminology, died while standing in line for groceries.

During a missile attack on Kyiv in early 2024, Lyudmila Shevtsova, a doctor of biological sciences, until recently a professor of the department of ecology at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, died.

The martyrology of the dead scientists is composed by a group of activists who started the project “Ukrainian scientists at war. UA Scientists at War”. One of the participants in the project, Oleksiy Boldyrev, head of the Biotechnology Department of the Kyiv Aviation Institute, scientific editor of the “My Science” portal, says that scientists and ordinary people on social networks help to collect data about the dead.

“First of all, we set ourselves the task of quantitatively assessing the losses, comparing them with the losses of Ukrainian science as a result of wars and repressions in the 20th century,” says Boldyrev.