Statement of the EPS on Ukraine

Statement by the Executive Committee of the European Physical Society

26 February 2022

The European Physical Society (EPS) strongly condemns the continuing attacks by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, an independent and sovereign country.

In clear violation of international law, the Russian government's decision will have drastic and negative consequences that are difficult to foresee, including on the development of the scientific cooperation between Eastern and Western European nations.

The values of the EPS are based on the free exchange and free expression of ideas and concepts in physics that nourish the development of our civilisation, and thereby contribute to the advance of humanity.

A country that invades its peaceful neighbor and threatens the other nations clearly violates these fundamental principles.

Therefore, the EPS calls on the entire scientific community and all citizens working in physics and beyond, to be uncompromising in their protest and to take active measures against the ongoing violence of the Russian army in Ukraine.

Today, the EPS expresses its deepest solidarity with the suffering Ukrainian people who find themselves in an unwanted and tragic situation in which not only their basic freedoms but also their very lives are threatened by the armed intervention of a foreign army. The Ukrainian Physical Society is a Member Society of the EPS and, as such, the EPS will do everything in its power to help to ensure the continuity of its cooperation with Ukrainian physicists.

Today, the EPS also sympathizes with the Russian physicists who refute the aggression of their government and suffer similarly from not being able to freely express their disagreement in their own homeland.

Today, in solidarity with our Ukrainian and Russian colleagues, the EPS suspends all joint actions co-sponsored with the Russian State for the time being. Further measures to be undertaken will be considered and acted by the next EPS Council in June 2022 in Paris, as the situation dictates.

Today, despite the dreadful and extremely dangerous crisis that the European continent is going through, the EPS firmly believes in a better future for tomorrow.

 

On behalf of the Executive Committee of the European Physical Society,

Luc Bergé,
President