How Putin’s War Is Sinking Climate Science

In the end, the war came three days early. It found me in Moscow, where I watched a Russian news anchor on state television call tanks crossing into Ukraine a “special operation.”

A Russian friend watched with me. We sat without speaking, dull and blank as the snow outside. Soon after, another Russian friend came over, and we discussed whether the ticket I’d bought for the next day would get me out of the country soon enough, or whether I had to go to the airport immediately.

I’d believed war was coming, but my belief hadn’t been shared by most of my Russian acquaintances. Nor had it been shared by the dozens of people I met in February as I worked my way through a series of cities from Ufa in the south to Arkhangelsk in the north.

I thought wrong, and the war arrived four days after closing ceremonies instead.

I am a journalist who has reported on climate change and gone on four research expeditions in the Far North in recent years. My latest published book, Icebound, narrates Dutch navigator William Barents’s voyages north of Siberia in the 1590s. I’ve seen for myself the value of international collaboration in science in the Arctic and have studied Russian, cold-water diving, and navigation specifically to do cross-border work on climate and archaeology. But the war, of course, has changed everything.

I had flown to Moscow early in February to research Russian Arctic history. By the time the war began, I’d spent more than two weeks in and out of museums, photographing rocks and relics, and learning from experts in everything from anthropology and ornithology to naval history and geology—all material for use