In case I die, I need to publish this paper : scientist who left the lab to fight in Ukraine

I was afraid. My feeling was that Russians came to kill us all. This broke my world because I couldn t imagine before that this could have happened.

A few days later, I travelled to Ukraine to join one of the freshly formed brigades. I didn t have much time to prepare. I just let my supervisors know that I was going. I visited my institute once for a couple of hours to cancel the timetable for experiments and stop ongoing processes in the laboratory. I was unsure whether I would ever make it back.

What was it like moving from the laboratory to the front lines?

I had no prior experience, and the military training didn t last long because there was very high demand for new recruits on the front lines. For each group sent from our training centre, about 50% died. So, I calculated that after five deployments, you have less than a 5% survival probability. At that time, I thought that most probably I would die in a couple of months.

In the military, any skill can be an advantage, including scientific skills. Several scientists came to Ukraine to fight as volunteers, including quite a few from abroad. What is helpful about being a scientist is having a systematic style of thinking.

I continued my scientific work even when I was in the trenches. I performed some editorial corrections to my paper submitted to Cell Death & Disease when we were under mortar shelling. I had a strong feeling that I had to finalize the paper; I thought that in case I die here, I need to get this paper published. We had some Internet connection, which I used to discuss edits with my co-authors. In some ways, it was like any distanced information exchange between scientists.

Of course, my colleagues were worried about me. From time to time, I sent them messages to let them know I was fine, although I couldn t share information about my whereabouts for security reasons. The paper was published last August¹, while I was still at war.

via www.nature.com

I feel for this guy. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be working on a law review article in the trenches. Probably I wouldn’t do it, unless it was to distract myself. I’m glad he’s around to be interviewed. The fatality rate — 50 percent — is extremely high. This must be a brutal, brutal war.