While European policymakers introduce new sanctions against Russia and talk about protecting critical technologies, one of Europe’s leading academic publishers, De Gruyter Brill, continues to collaborate with Russian scientific institutions that have ties to the FSB and the military-industrial complex.
Immediately after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the publisher publicly condemned the aggression and announced restrictions on cooperation with Russian and Belarusian state organisations, while stipulating that individual manuscripts from Russian scholars would continue to be accepted. In practice, however, no complete break occurred. Journals whose editorial boards and authors are closely linked to Russian state structures — including those working in dual-use technology — continue to appear under the De Gruyter Brill brand.
Particularly noteworthy is the journal Discrete Mathematics and Applications, which the publisher itself positions as a window into Russian mathematics for a global audience. Editor-in-chief Andrei Zubkov is based in Moscow, and the editorial board consists almost entirely of Russian mathematicians from Moscow and Novosibirsk institutions. The journal’s subject matter falls squarely within dual-use technologies: cryptography and coding theory, network analysis, algorithmic complexity, and probabilistic methods — all of which have direct military applications.
Among the journal’s contributors are representatives of the Academy of Cryptography of the Russian Federation, a state body engaged in information security research with close ties to national security interests. Papers have also appeared on cryptosystems based on Reed–Solomon and Reed–Muller codes, key distribution schemes, and other areas applied in military communications systems, with some authors affiliated with institutions carrying out classified contracts for the Russian Ministry of Defence.
The problem, however, extends well beyond a single journal. Editorial boards of several publications include individuals connected to FSB-affiliated structures, and certain submissions come from organisations under international sanctions. The Russian academic environment as a whole remains deeply militarised: the FSB officially oversees the international contacts of researchers, security officers are embedded in universities and institutes, and many institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences fulfil classified defence contracts.
This creates several interconnected layers of risk for Europe. Technology transfer through a prestigious European platform helps disseminate knowledge applicable to cyberattacks, encryption of military communications, and drone control systems, while academic channels have traditionally been exploited by the FSB for intelligence gathering and recruitment. Furthermore, publication under an authoritative European brand lends legitimacy to structures serving the war effort and undermines the reputation of the European academic community in the eyes of those counting on its solidarity with Ukraine.
De Gruyter Brill is not the only publisher facing such contradictions — similar questions arise with regard to Springer Nature, Elsevier, and other major players. But in the context of a full-scale war and Russia’s hybrid threats, prolonged inaction becomes increasingly indistinguishable from complicity.
The De Gruyter Brill case makes clear that voluntary declarations are insufficient, and that academic openness, unsupported by systemic oversight mechanisms, becomes a vulnerability that Russia is capable of exploiting deliberately and methodically. The war has long since extended beyond the battlefield to encompass the economy, the information space, and science — yet European publishers continue to operate as though they still inhabit the world before February 2022.
In the context of a full-scale war, institutional neutrality is not a position — it is a refusal to take one. By continuing to publish material from structures integrated into Russia’s military-intelligence apparatus, European publishers — whether wittingly or not — become part of the very system that official Europe has declared a threat to its security. Brand prestige does not mitigate the problem; it compounds it, since that prestige is precisely what provides Russian structures with the international legitimacy they could not obtain by any other means.
The way out of this contradiction requires not a ban on academic exchange as such, but a principled distinction between supporting independent scholars and institutional collaboration with state structures whose documented ties to Russia’s military apparatus are a matter of record. That distinction is achievable — but only with political will, transparent vetting procedures, and a readiness to recognise that science is as much a strategic resource as energy or defence technology, and demands an equally serious approach to security.