A scientific council says the Telegram ban is causing ‘serious damage’ to Russia's scientific research capacity

The Russian Education Ministry’s Science Council published a statement on Wednesday demanding that Roskomnadzor restore access to various online scientific resources that have been blocked in the agency’s efforts to cut off access to servers used by the instant messenger Telegram. According to the council, Russian scholars have been disconnected from more than a dozen websites and services that are “extremely important for scientific work.”

The Science Council says Roskomnadzor’s damage to Russia’s scientific community has been “serious,” and highlighted the blocking of the Digital Object Identifier system, which is used to identify journal articles, research reports, and data sets.

Hasn’t Russia’s censor blamed this collateral damage on Internet Service Providers? The Science Council isn’t buying that. Its statement says, “The council believes that Roskomnadzor, and not particular Internet providers, is fully responsible for the current situation. [...] The disruption of scientific work throughout the country is too high a price to pay for a clumsy attempt to enforce a court ruling against a single company.”