The Gatchina District Court has resumed hearings in the case of Dmitry Bogmut, a technician at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute named after B.P. Konstantinov (part of the Kurchatov Institute). After the onset of the war in Ukraine, Bogmut posted anti-war videos in a private thread on a forum with only a dozen users. He has been held in a pre-trial detention center for a year and a half and faces up to ten years in prison. Court hearings are regularly attended by a crowd of men in camouflage, seemingly organized as “extras”, identified as “Donbas volunteers.” Meanwhile, the names of activists supporting Bogmut have been publicly disclosed by state news agencies, leading to threats against them.

Laboratory-grown skin grafts are already part of the medical toolkit. However, a project from Tel Aviv University, supported by Zimin Institutes, promises a breakthrough in near-authentic skin transplant: dense, elastic, and multi-layered. In experimental mice, hair even grows at the burn site. T-Invariant explores how this technology was developed and how close it is to clinical application.

T-invariant and the CISRUS Center are releasing issue No. 24 of “Chronicles of the Persecution of Scientists” dated August 31, 2025

The year 2025 isn’t over yet, but we already know of 12 instances of criminal prosecutions against rectors of Russian universities, as well as 10 sentences handed down to them. And this isn’t a record: in the last pre-war year of 2021, law enforcement took interest in 17 university leaders. This is how the process of elite turnover is unfolding in higher education, which Vladimir Putin initiated after returning to the presidential seat in 2012. T-invariant examined the stories of criminal prosecutions of rectors from 2012 to 2025 and found that leading a university is no less dangerous than serving as a deputy to a governor or minister.

After Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, there was talk of rebooting U.S.–Russian cooperation across many fields — space included. In Moscow, hopes were pinned on the “Luna” program, anticipating that it could be pursued jointly with the US program, ideally as a joint venture with the United States. Is there any real future for U.S.–Russian cooperation in space? And could Russia’s lunar program plausibly be its centerpiece? Vadim Lukashevich, an aerospace expert, takes stock.

In previous issues of Plagiarism Navigator, we explored the journeys of Russian-language academic texts across various countries in Europe and Asia. Today’s issue tells the story of publications in Australian journals, intertwining the Zhukov-Fedyakin family clan from the Russian State Social University (RSSU), former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, former RSSU rector Natalia Pochinok, and a Kuban engineer who infiltrated Australia via a Polish journal.

On July 11, the Pereslavl District Court announced the verdict for Sergei Abramov, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). The court found the scientist guilty of funding extremist activities (Part 1, Article 282.3 of the Russian Criminal Code) and imposed a fine of 150,000 rubles (approximately $1,500). The charges stemmed from seven donations totaling 7,000 rubles (~$70) to the FBK (the transliterated Russian acronym for Fond Borby s Korruptsiyey — the Anti-Corruption Foundation founded by Alexey Navalny). While the legal ordeal has concluded, Abramov’s return to an active professional life remains a distant prospect. In an interview with T-invariant prior to the verdict, Sergei Abramov described how his presence on the “extremists and terrorists” list has led to what he calls, if not a “civil death,” then severe civil disability.

In a previous Plagiarism Navigator investigation, we exposed Iranian scholars who defended stolen Russian dissertations—translated into Tajik—at Tajik universities. They exploited a loophole known as “dissertation tourism,” which offers a backdoor into the global academic community: via Tajikistan and Russia’s Higher Attestation Commission (VAK). Unsurprisingly, Tajik scholars themselves have embraced this backdoor enthusiastically. With the highest number of plagiarized dissertations per capita, Tajikistan tops Dissernet’s global rankings by a wide margin. Today, we examine the career of Kobiljon Khushvakhtzoda—a former provincial accountant who climbed the ranks to become Chairman of Tajikistan’s Academy of Sciences.

June 22, 1941, marked the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Today, 84 years later, Ukrainian cities are again under bombardment—but now the aggressor is Russia. How has the war in Ukraine altered our understanding of that past conflict? What revelations about history does the present compel us to confront? T-invariant discussed these questions with Alexander Dmitriev, a historian and native of Kherson, now a visiting researcher at the European University Viadrina (Germany).