Kovalchuk spoke about "semi-secret" ties between foreign scientists and colleagues from the Russian Federation

Relations between foreign scientists and specialists from Russia are preserved, including in a "semi-underground" format. This statement was made on September 24 by Mikhail Kovalchuk, President of the National Research Center (NRC) Kurchatov Institute, on the air of the Solovyov Live TV channel Mikhail Kovalchuk on the air of the TV channel "Solovyov Live".

"Of course, any breakup is a loss, <...> like a family divorce. <...> But human relations are preserved, somewhere they are 'semi-secret', because people are afraid," he commented on the decision of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to stop cooperation with specialists from the Russian Federation.

Kovalchuk noted that Russia's role in Western scientific projects is huge and added that there will be a process of finding ways to resume contacts in the future.

Speaking to Izvestia on Saturday, September 21, Kovalchuk said that CERN would face consequences for refusing to cooperate with Russia. He said that Russia has contributed a total of more than €2 billion to the organization's projects over the past decades. The intellectual contribution of scientists is also huge. In addition, he highlighted the pros of the termination of cooperation.

CERN started cooperating with the USSR in 1955. Although Russia was never a full member state, hundreds of scientists associated with Russian institutions contributed to independent experiments at its flagship particle gas pedal, the Large Hadron Collider.