By the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s new presidential term in 2030, Russia’s fastest-growing neurotechnology company Neiry promises to begin developing solutions for maintaining mental health and cognitive function, as well as technologies for stimulating brain neuroplasticity and managing emotional states — specifically, “fear, happiness levels, and motivation.” Research and development are being handled by scientists at Moscow State University’s AI Research Institute, which is headed by Putin’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova. What is at stake is extending life expectancy and improving quality of life in old age — a topic that deeply concerns the Russian President, though he is certainly not alone in this interest. With such positioning, Neiry expects to secure significantly more funding, according to T-invariant’s sources in the Russian venture capital market.

Vladimir Kharitonov is one of the key figures shaping today’s independent Russian-language book world outside Russia. In an interview with T-invariant, the technical director of Freedom Letters and head of the Free University’s publishing project explains how today’s tamizdat differs from Soviet samizdat and why the printed book is still very much alive — TikTok notwithstanding.

The academic community has launched a signature campaign in support of the philosopher Svetlana Mesyats. She has been charged with fraud on an especially large scale, an accusation that can carry a sentence of up to ten years in prison. Svetlana Mesyats’s prosecution fits the pattern of other criminal cases targeting Russian scholars who have returned to the country. Marina Bykova, a professor at North Carolina State University, reflects on whether public support from the anti-war opposition is useful or dangerous.

In May 2026, a court handed down sentences to physicists Valery Zvegintsev and Vladislav Galkin. This marked the end of the hypersonic scientists case — the largest criminal prosecution of researchers in modern Russia. Over the course of 11 years, 11 physicists fell victim to the security services. Three of them died while under investigation, and five essentially received death sentences. T-invariant reviews the outcome of the hypersonic scientists case and examines what convicted researchers must do to demonstrate their utility to a state that hands them prison terms incompatible with life.

In Georgia’s academic world, an entire industry of research fraud hides behind the mask of high citation indices, prestigious journals, and academy memberships. Professors with international reputations use crude distortions, AI-generated images of geese instead of scientific graphs, and blatant plagiarism to churn out publications and secure grants. Plagiat-Navigator tried to make sense of the situation that has developed in Georgia.

Russia’s neocolonial policies in the occupied territories of Ukraine target the education system first: schools and universities have become primary tools for coercion and identity erasure. This is the core finding of a recent study by the Ukrainian outlet Realnaya Gazeta, which details how the Kremlin carries out ethnic displacement across multiple levels. Journalist Ksenia Turkova spoke with Andrey Dikhtarenko, editor-in-chief of Realnaya Gazeta, to discuss the report for T-invariant.

The Director of the MSU Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Katerina Tikhonova, now oversees a significant portion of AI education, research, and development in Russia. The Kremlin has long been working to consolidate this industry into a single system, and “control over it” can only be entrusted to a select few. However, these technologies are sovereign only on paper and in officials’ speeches. In reality, Russia remains heavily dependent on global AI. T-invariant examines how Katerina Tikhonova, Oleg Deripaska, and VTB Bank are involved in the process, why a “unified AI ecosystem” was built on Sparrow Hills.

Russia is currently discussing a draft law on the regulation of artificial intelligence (the AI Law), which may come into force on September 1, 2027. Major market players and legal experts are taking part in the discussion, but it is already clear that the central issue is not technological development. It is control over what users ask and what machines answer. T-invariant explains how the state intends to effectively legalize censorship in the AI sphere, how this mechanism would work, and who may end up taking the blame.

The Russian-American Science Association (RASA) strongly condemns the decision of the Russian authorities to declare our colleague, former president of RASA, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and an outstanding chemist professor Alexander Kabanov a “foreign agent.” This step is yet another manifestation of a policy pursued by the Russian leadership that runs against the interests of its own people. It is, however, incapable of stopping the scientific and humanistic work of people like Alexander Kabanov.