Ukrainian science: before the point of bifurcation

When I write these lines, the Ukrainian society on the whole stands before the point of bifurcation (final crawling to the authoritarianism and kleptocracy or renewal of the motion to civilized Europe with its democratic standards). At the same time Ukrainian science appeared before the point of bifurcation: on April, 17 the plenary powers of presidium of the NAS of Ukraine headed by Borys Paton, who has managed the Academy for more than half a century, are completed. Already today it is clear: the NAS will never be the one which it has been until now (there is simply no other person able to manage this very complicated system the way it was and is managed by 95-year-old Borys Paton, and the terms and conditions under which he created this system have been changed irrevocably). But at the same time it is not clear at all what the main scientific establishment of the state will look like and in general whether it will manage to survive in the stormy sea of inevitable changes.