The moderators of the Reptile Database, a scientific online database of reptiles, have removed references to more than a thousand publications by Russian and Soviet scientists from it. So they protested against the military actions of Russia on the territory of Ukraine. The decision is announced in the site's newsletter. The move has already drawn criticism from herpetologists and reptile enthusiasts around the world as it makes access to scientific knowledge much more difficult. For example, the database now lacks articles by the outstanding Soviet biologist Andrei Grigoryevich Bannikov (1915-1985), professor, author of more than 400 published works.

Explanation of the most scientific online database (translated from English): “Usually in this newsletter we do not touch politics, but due to the invasion of Ukraine, we feel we should ... We have about 50-100 Russians on the mailing list and we have great respect for them as colleagues. However, Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin have gone too far with their invasion of Ukraine. In protest, we have temporarily removed over 1,000 Russian articles from this edition of the Reptilia database (or rather, replaced them with placeholders), mostly articles by Russian authors and publishers (some collateral damage will be done to people outside of Russia who co-authored these articles, sorry ).