Why support?

Any war is certainly a bad thing in general, but we suggest you thinking now about how the war impacts personally you, a person outside of the battlefield, and therefore understand better why should you consider supporting the initiatives against it. 

• Stance for Democracy and Open Society

The current warfare is a fight between a country that is willing to be democratic and a country that is openly not democratic. The outcome of this battle will strongly impact the stance of democracy and open society values worldwide in future, and in particular it will affect the political competition between democratic and non-democratic forces in your country. The freedom of thought, the representation of opinions and the international collaboration while recognising national, ethnic, and other diversities are the basis of the welfare in the developed societies. Notably, precisely these principles enable the development of modern Science, which is in the focus of our lectures. If you value these principles in your life, you can actively defend them now.

• Economy

This war has already taken a lot of resources and will cost even more to everyone on the Globe. While Ukraine and Russia are directly affected, Europe spends considerable resources in supporting Ukraine, as well as paying the price for sanctions against Russia. The unstable and threatening military situation, which will remain if the conflict gets frozen but unresolved, will in the coming years require increased investments in security. Clearly, the scientific budgets will suffer from the overall economic downfall as well. The longer the conflict remains, the harder are the economic consequences. Counterintuitively, the way to diminish the long term economic impact is to invest even more in the fight right now. 

• Humanitarian situation

The people leaving Ukraine are numerous, they are well received in Europe and worldwide and most of them are willing to come back home as soon as possible. But the situation of those who reached shelter is by no means easy. People need jobs, their savings run out, and the things will worsen over time. If the conflict is not resolved soon, the number of people in desperate situation will increase dramatically, and this  will affect your nearest society and the way your day-to-day life is arranged. It is very important to not only help the victims of war, but also take all the effort in making it possible for them to come back home.

Can you, an individual, help? With governments giving billions to Ukraine, it may feel that no single person can make a significant impact. You may even feel that the situation will resolve now anyway without your help. There are nonetheless arguments to take you action now:

• The existing help is indeed big but it still makes sense to increase it.

And the quicker the situation resolves - the better it is for everyone. A big amount of help is spread over an even bigger number of target needs. Your extra, even small, will eventually contribute to the common cause. If you want to feel the impact directly, choose smaller-scale organizations or help locally.

• The outcome of any action has long-term effects

Your small action will have a bigger indirect impact. When you decide to help, you assume a clear position. Having this position you will intentionally or not affect people in your interaction bubble. For some of them this will be the reason to take their own decisions. Eventually this will promote the values you are standing for at the level of society. This collective effect is not immediate, but if we want to get rid of the war in a long term, thinking `it is just now' is definitely a mistake.

• You can influence political decisions

If you have your opinion and discuss it with others, eventually it will have an impact at the level of the community and can be heard by political powers. Many questions in history were, are, and will be about the political will: This applies to the current war as well. Those who can make direct decisions eventually must rely on the endorsement of people. 

What is the viewpoint of the organisers? During the lectures, we shall focus on the scientific outreach and shall not discuss politics. But we find it important to express our position. Our team comprises people of different nationalities. Each member has a somewhat different opinion on what is the best course of action, but we all agree on the following: we recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine, we agree that the current Russian political system works against basic values of humanity, and we believe that freezing this conflict unresolved will not remove a severe threat it poses for the worldwide security.

This is our position as private individuals. Official positions of our employers (Universities or Research institutes) are available on their websites.