London, March 27 (Sputnik). The United Kingdom has decided to halt cooperation with Russia in the field of scientific research and innovation due to Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Britain’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said on Sunday.
“The government has taken a decision to suspend publicly funded research and innovative cooperation with Russian universities and companies of strategic importance to the Russian state,” the statement said.
The ministry specifies that its goal is “to introduce measures that have a negative impact on the Russian state and on individuals and organizations with strong ties to the Kremlin, but not to punish individual Russian scientists or innovators with benign research interests.”
The text highlights “Therefore, we will not finance any new cooperation projects with Russia through our research and innovation organizations.”
London has also taken the decision to suspend the current intergovernmental dialogue with Moscow “through our Network of Science and Innovation team in Russia, including its collaborative science projects”.
Finally, the United Kingdom stressed its offer to provide a “support package of three million pounds (about four million dollars) to Ukrainian researchers at risk”.
Several countries began to tighten sanctions against Russia after it recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as sovereign states on February 21 and launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine three days later, claiming that the two republics had requested assistance against Kyiv’s aggression.
In an unprecedented situation, individual restrictions have been extended to include Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Sectoral sanctions, aimed at inflicting as much damage as possible on the Russian economy, include the country’s partial disengagement from the SWIFT system, the paralysis of its central bank’s international reserves and the closure of airline airspace. (Sputnik)
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