6 березня 2022

Appeal to President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Dear Mr. President
of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Prof. Dr. Hans-Christian Pape,

The whole world witnessed how on February 24, the president of Russia Putin started a military invasion of Ukraine, which is a blatant act of aggression on a neighbouring democratic country.

The Russian army is shelling residential areas of our cities from Russia, Belarus, occupied Crimea and Transdniestrian region, killing civilians and destroying infrastructure. Our fellow countrymen, women and children in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernigiv, Kherson, Mariupol (and many other places too) have been enduring relentless attacks by aviation, tanks, cruise and ballistic missiles (yes, you heard it right), by high mobility artillery rocket systems (HMARS), damaging indiscriminately everything in large areas, destroying habitats, critical infrastructure and killing civilians.

These actions are attacks not only on Ukraine but also on those values and freedoms that, we hope, all Humboldtianers share with us. We are extremely grateful to the AvH Foundation for the support of Ukraine in this critical time. We also hope that most of the Humboldtianers from Russia do not support Putin. However, technological and scientific progress they made has served to strengthen Putin's regime that is now threatening the world with nuclear weapons.

Therefore, we urgently ask AvH Stiftung to suspend every possible collaboration with Russian institutions and to stop any application procedures related to Russian scientists. Just words of support are not an adequate response, under the current circumstances, that one would expect from the scientific world upholding the values of free civilization!

Thank you for your involvement! By helping protect Ukraine, you will help to protect the whole Europe!

On behalf of the Humboldt Club Ukraine
Oleksandra Antoniouk, the President (antoniouk.a@gmail.com)
Rostyslav Hryniv, Vice President (rhryniv@ucu.edu.ua)
Yurii Naidyuk, Vice President (naidyuk@ilt.kharkov.ua)
Nataliya Petlyuchenko, Vice President (natalja.petljutschenko@onua.edu.ua)
Grygoriy Torbin, Vice President (torbin@npu.edu.ua)