Russian universities, made an official statement on 19 November during the last meeting at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), demanding that the Russian government cancel the existing order on the grounds that a “free exchange of scientific ideas” is an important condition for the development of science in Russia.“The legislation of the Russian Federation imposes lots of restrictions on scientists working on some closed issues. But additional restrictions are not allowed. In this regard, the RAS General Assembly insists on cancelling the order.”The order, which was officially sent by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science to various domestic scientific organisations and higher education institutions back in July, was aimed at regulating the way in which they interact and cooperate with foreign scientific organisations and universities, includinghad been lifted from Soviet era documents.While the Russian government refused to clarify the reasons for the order, some domestic analysts, as well as representatives of some leading domestic universities, suggested the decision was related to some recent cases of disclosure of classified information by Russian scientists to some Western research institutions, which the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) alleged could be affiliated to the CIA and MI6.An example of this is the case of Viktor Kudryavtsev, an employee of the Central Scientific Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering (TsNIIMash), who was arrested in July 2018. According to investigators, he sent classified data to Belgium’s Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, with which TsNIIMash was involved in the implementation of a joint project.Representatives of all Russian universities approached byrefused