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[Richard B. Kreckel]

Dear Vladimir,

Personally, I respect your fair call for neutrality in this horrible 
civilizational disaster. But I also think there is a delicate balancing 
act between *neutrality* and *objectivity*.

On 9/27/22 16:20, Vladimir V. Kisil wrote:
> [...]                                Current information flows are
> full of fakes, manipulations and war-time propaganda. The sequence of
> events will be a subject for heated debates for decades to come.

There is certainly misleading information both on the western 
(uncensored, free, and competitive) media and on the Russian (censored, 
oppressed, and state-dictated) media. But to equate these two would 
clearly mean to sacrifice one's objectivity to neutrality!

> Alternatively, we may delete the whole statement all together. Calling
> for peace we shall do the first step ourselves by not taking a side in
> the ongoing war.

As scientists, our influence on the course of events is limited. Yet, 
not to speak up would mean to relinquish all influence. (Overly pathetic 
example: If the "Göttingen 18" hadn't spoken up in 1957, Germany would 
have developed nuclear weapons.) Hence, deleting the statement 
altogether would IMHO be faint-hearted.

I re-read our statement carefully and found the first paragraph neutral 
– it merely sets a backdrop. The second paragraph then supports a call 
from Russian fellow scientists – among them at least one Fields 
medalist. Recall that their plea was squashed a few days later by 
authorities. (It has since been published abroad.) I suppose we all 
agree that shutting up a scientific community is unacceptable. In this 
conflict, suppression of speech happens objectively unilaterally.

Striving for neutrality we could do two things: Replace "the Russian 
government" by "everybody". In addition, we should add a link to this 
non-Russian scientists' call for peace: 
<https://www.mpg.de/peace-declaration-nobel-prize-laureates>. (I am 
aware that it is also not "neutral".)

That would be my candid proposal.

All my best,
   -richy.
-- 
Richard B. Kreckel
<https://in.terlu.de/~kreckel/>