Centre for Civic Education (CCE) points out that the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (CANU), despite the publicly expressed support of Montenegro for Ukraine following the Russian aggression, continued cooperation with structures close to regimes participating in that aggression, and that the President of CANU officially visited Moscow in 2024.
The Russian aggression against Ukraine in its full scope has been ongoing since 24 February 2022, while its roots date back to 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and supported separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. As early as 2014, Montenegro, following the foreign policy of the European Union, introduced sanctions against Russia, which were further expanded after the 2022 invasion. The CCE recalls that on 1 March 2022, through a statement, the Presidency of CANU expressed support for Ukrainian colleagues and the appeals of the international academic community to preserve the territorial integrity and cultural identity of Ukraine, emphasising that “it is in the tradition of Montenegro to support those who defend their home and their state, as well as the right to freely decide on their own future.” At the time of that statement, the President of CANU was Dragan Vukčević.
In that context, it is highly indicative that Vukčević himself participated in September 2024 in a session of the Council of the International Association of Academies of Sciences in Moscow. Although this association was established in 1993 at the initiative of the Ukrainian academician Borys Paton, the role of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in it significantly changed after 2014, and today it is closely connected with the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, which is responsible for the organisational and methodological support of its work. Following the Russian invasion in 2022, this association, although requested to do so by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, did not condemn the military aggression of Russia against Ukraine, the killing of civilians, the destruction of infrastructure and the bombing of cities, nor did it provide support to the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which is why that academy withdrew from it.
Today, the association is headed by Vladimir Karanik, President of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus, who is under sanctions by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Canada due to his role in the repression of citizens who protested against Lukashenko in 2020. The association itself is institutionally and symbolically linked to the authorities of Belarus – it is part of the website of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, hosted on a domain registered to the Government of Belarus, and the icons on the website link to the website of the President of Belarus, the Government of Belarus and other institutions.
The association brings together 27 academies of sciences and research centres from the post-Soviet space, China, Vietnam, Mongolia, Georgia, Cuba and Montenegro, the only European member that did not belong to the former Soviet Union. Given that the International Association of Academies of Sciences is a kind of post-Soviet coordinating body for academies from those countries, the decision of CANU to join this association in 2018 is unusual, especially since other academies from the former Yugoslav area, with which CANU closely cooperates, are not members.
The host of the meeting in Moscow was the Russian Academy of Sciences, also associated with support for the war in Ukraine. Vukčević was elected an academician of this association in 2019, and at the meeting in Moscow he also received the formal insignia of an academician of this association.
The costs of his trip to Moscow amounted to €759.19, and the visit lasted from 17 to 21 September 2024. CANU did not inform the public about this trip or the award granted to Vukčević, nor does it have a report from the official trip, and the only official information related to this meeting in CANU’s possession is the official invitation sent to Dragan Vukčević in Russian.
The CCE assesses that institutions such as CANU must consistently apply the values they publicly advocate. Declarative support for Ukraine loses its meaning if cooperation is simultaneously maintained with organisations close to regimes participating in its destruction. Therefore, we call on CANU to reconsider and terminate its membership in this association, following the example of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Sara Čabarkapa, Active Citizenship Programme Coordinator