A new way to recruit students into the Unmanned Systems Troops is by encouraging volunteers through the example of their peers. T-invariant reviewed university and college websites and social media pages, along with regional media reports, and compiled the most telling cases. University rectors are required to report on their results at regular meetings with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko. But the quota for each institution – at least 2% of the total student body – is hard to meet.

The year 2026 marks the tenth anniversary of Havana Syndrome — a mysterious psychophysiological disorder caused divide among scientists. While Trump speaks of a secret “Discombobulator,” and intelligence agencies quietly purchase devices allegedly capable of mimicking Havana Syndrome, new theories about its origin are emerging. T-invariant examined why the microwave hypothesis has hit a dead end, how the laser version could help resolve it, and what the consequences will be if this does not happen.

In March 2026, the Alabuga Special Economic Zone (SEZ) launched an aggressive recruitment campaign targeting teenagers starting from 8th grade to assemble Shahed combat drones. Influencer marketing agencies help attract schoolchildren to build the main tool of daily terror against Ukraine. These managers never visited Alabuga and operate from the upper floors of Moscow City or from exotic islands in Southeast Asia. T-invariant has uncovered how the work of people who “every day live their best life” is organized, how their narratives and technical assignments are turned into videos on YouTube, TikTok, and Telegram, and how young influencers and internet entrepreneurs fight negative comments by scrubbing “stop words” about their client’s activities.

Boris Tsilevich spent decades advocating for minority rights in PACE, became the first chair of the subcommittee on minority rights, and in 2023 secured — via Latvia’s Constitutional Court — the right to use Russian-language for higher education in private universities. Today he believes the era of minority rights has effectively come to an end. In an interview with T-invariant, Tsilevich explains how the security considerations dismantled the Council of Europe’s minority protection system, why even “ostensibly satisfied” minorities tend toward political separatism, and how the principles of DEI have supplanted multiculturalism.

Russia’s Neiry Group implants electrodes in pigeons’ brains to create remotely controlled “biodrones” that fly longer and blend in better than conventional drones. Founded by advertiser-turned neuro-entrepreneur Alexander Panov, the project has attracted major funding and is tied to scientists at the MSU Institute of Artificial Intelligence, led by Vladimir Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova. T-invariant reveals who profits from the neurotech boom — dubbed “coercive optimism” by academics — and what it can actually deliver in 2026.

Science at Risk has released its latest monitoring reports on the state of academic freedom in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. These reports are based on incident monitoring, interviews with scholars, and analysis of open sources. T-invariant compares these reports with one another and with the global Free to Think (FTT) 2025 report on academic freedom, an analytical overview of which we published last year. The new SAR documents provide a more detailed account of the processes unfolding in the three countries affected by war and authoritarianism, allowing us to trace the mechanisms of academic freedom’s degradation.

Summing up the results of the year as editor-in-chief, I reflect on the path I have traveled in this field over the past five years. At the end of 2019, I accepted the invitation from Pleiades Publishing to lead the journal, which at that time was called Review Journal of Chemistry. I agreed because I firmly believed in the importance of continuing publishing activities and preserving national scientific journals in the countries of the former USSR—especially in Russia, where the main scientific potential of the former superpower remains concentrated.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has started urging students at Russian universities to work as drone operators. But to do so, they must first sign a military service contract. Students are promised lump-sum payments of five million rubles and the option to terminate the contract after just one year. A T-invariant correspondent investigated whether the Defense Ministry’s promises can be trusted.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, countries in NATO and the EU (as well as Japan, Switzerland, and several others) imposed economic sanctions on Russia that included either a complete trade ban or significant restrictions on commerce. This severely impacted sectors of the economy critically dependent on imports of high-tech products. One such sector is experimental scientific research. Nevertheless, many university and academic laboratories continue to operate. Alexander Chizhov, PhD in chemistry and author of more than 200 publications in organic chemistry and structural chemistry of natural compounds, tells T-invariant how this remains possible.