Russian technical equipment and consumables were cut off, and some purchases turned to China

According to sciencebusiness, Russian researchers are losing access to vital laboratory equipment as Western sanctions on Russia begin to take effect, which could weaken Russia's scientific base. Direct export controls, bank sanctions, logistics closures, and some of the world's largest scientific instrument makers have stopped selling to Russia.

The EU has banned the export of a large number of technical equipment to Russia, including mass spectrometers and oscilloscopes, even if the kit is not EU-made. At the same time, the United States banned the export of semiconductors, computers, lasers and sensors to Russia.

Some of the world's largest scientific suppliers have stopped selling to Russia. For example, American Thermo Fisher Scientific, Japanese instrument giant Shimadzu, major microscope manufacturer Nikon, and German optics giant Zeiss have stopped selling equipment, software and services to Russia some or all of the business. In addition to specialized scientific equipment, Russia will also struggle to import processors after U.S. chipmakers Intel, AMD and Nvidia stopped sales to the country. If this embargo persists, it raises serious questions about Russia's future supercomputing capabilities, which are essential for many data-intensive fields of research.

Possibility to switch to Chinese sourcing?

Some Russian biologists said: "We will have to urgently adjust the direction of purchases and turn to China, but there are other problems." China also has its own scientific equipment problems. Despite its success in consumer technologies such as smartphones, China is still relatively weak in making scientific instruments, according to a paper published last year by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. They concluded that Chinese instruments are still "far from the international advanced level", forcing China to import the vast majority of its research equipment in certain fields, and Chinese companies do not appear on the list of the world's largest scientific equipment manufacturers.

What's more, the United States has been squeezing China's access to scientific equipment through export control restrictions, classifying many of the equipment as dual-use. The document states that more than 40 percent of the thousands of controls imposed in the United States are related to research equipment.

In fact, in the Sino-US trade war in recent years, China has also faced embargoes on core instruments, equipment, and chips, and many domestic scientific research institutions and enterprises have been included in the "sanctions" list, reminding China of independent research and development and mastery of core technologies. importance.