2021 Volume 4 Issue 5 (Published 28 February 2022)

Dear colleagues,  

Spring is here, and we are still presenting the last year's editions. It's time to get a move on, especially as real time is filled with unpredictable events that have unexpectedly affected science. The politically motivated mass rejections to publish our articles have begun. What logic moves our Western colleagues? We are a state organization, and as a state organization we support the actions of our President and Government by default. We are absolutely certain that if our country decided to denazify Ukraine it means that all other means to normalize the situation have failed. Russia doesn't like to use force; however, if it has to, it does it well, with confidence that we are in the right. That means that we should act according to a bit of ancient wisdom: do what must and come what may. That is what we are doing, each of us does what one must wherever he or she is, and believe that everything will be fine.

In point of fact, this isn't exactly new. We have already observed certain discrimination in regards to our articles, although this new phase of discrimination against Russian scientists has gone way over the line. On the other hand, now all previously hidden became clear, and concealed Russophobia transformed into an obvious expression of utter bias. We hope that true scientists are above all these petty political squabbles. Sports, science, and culture have always been outside of politics, even during the Cold War…

It's unclear whom they have punished. Russian science and its flagship, the Russian Academy of Sciences, are unique phenomena—there is nothing like the Academy anywhere else in the world. It's a self-sustaining organization that has preserved its unique identity and even statehood despite innumerable troubles it had faced throughout its 300 years of history. It had always worked for the country and the world by extension, because no other scientific organization on the planet had such a systematic, truly fundamental approach to scientific research. Not because Russian scientists are smarter than anyone else, no, but rather because this system had been forged in political storms and wars of such a magnitude that no foreign analog had withstood. Even now, its former members are employed throughout the world doing groundbreaking research. But let's leave politics to politicians and get back to science.

We will survive this storm as well; we will only come even more together and will strengthen the integration with our schools, coordination with the Academy institutes and business structures. As for our works, the Western scientists will continue reading them as they have before. No, they will not cite our works as due, but that's a different story. We are open to publications of scientific works from all scientists of the world, and our main choice criterion is not the current political landscape but the level of scientific accomplishments.

Per tradition, I will touch upon the work of the Chemistry and Materials Science Department. Following the memorable scientific session that we talked about in the previous issue, the Department began preparations for the elections of professors of the Russian Academy of Sciences, just as the elections for the new Academy members appeared on the horizon. INEOS RAS held a meeting of the Science Council and elected A. A. Trifonov, the corresponding member of the RAS and Institute's director, an expert in organometallic chemistry, for the full members, and professor of the RAS N. V. Belkova for corresponding members. Let's wish luck to our candidates!

As I present this issue, I wish to emphasize that it has been completed fully with preliminary uploading of articles as they became available, and this invokes optimism when it comes to shortening the time of their release. It's important, bearing in mind the two-month rhythm of the Journal's publication.

The new issue opens with a review of R. R. Aysin and S. S. Bukalov devoted to the modern aromaticity criteria for organometallic compounds. I am especially pleased that this issue includes the highlights of V. S. Papkov, one of the INEOS veterans, an expert in physics of polymers, including the thermal properties of organosilicon polymers. Another review of the issue is the work of my young colleagues S. N. Ardabevskaia and S. A. Milenin, the ambitious followers of D. Tomalia in the field of expansion of dendrimer systems and creation of regular macro-objects. The very name "megamers" evidences the potent ambitions. It's important that they will not repeat the mistakes of the founder of this direction and remain within the contains of the synthesized objects, while the levels of predicting the value of new materials for the present-day materials science will be based on actually synthesized and well-characterized objects. I am pleased to present the works of our colleagues from other Academy institutes; this shows the diversity of our Journal. In this issue, the articles on the fundamental chemistry concepts, medicine and biology are right next to the work on the luminescence properties of lanthanide complexes with fullerene-containing ligands. It denotes the style of one of the world's leading experts in photonics and molecular electronics P. A. Troshin and our renowned veteran A. S. Peregudov.

In conclusion, this issue is a success and I wholeheartedly recommend it to your attention and active citing.

Sincerely yours, Editor-in-Chief Prof., Full Member of RAS Aziz M. Muzafarov

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