Students prefer AI chatbots, until they know it is one

University of Cincinnati nursing professor studies AI chatbots in higher education advising

University of Cincinnati

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Dr. Joshua Lambert is an associate professor in the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing.

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Do chatbots have a role in higher education?

It’s a question Joshua Lambert, an associate professor and biostatistician in the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing, is pondering. He’s turned to a group of his students to find out their thoughts about the helpfulness and satisfaction of a custom AI education chatbot. 

Lambert piloted his custom chatbot by examining how a small group of Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) students evaluated answers to a set of questions from three different sources: a professor, a graduate assistant and a chatbot. 

The results of the study have been published in the Journal of Nursing Education. This pilot project used a randomized, blinded, within-subjects comparison study with survey-based evaluation.

Seven doctoral students in the study submitted statistical questions related to their capstone projects and received blind responses from the professor, graduate assistant and chatbot. They rated each response on helpfulness, satisfaction and likelihood of use on a scale of one to five with the best being five. They then guessed which response came from the chatbot.

“Students first gave us their questions and then we gave them three responses back in a blinded and randomized fashion so students were unaware which response came from either the professor, graduate assistant or chatbot,” explains Lambert. “The students ranked each response in terms of helpfulness, overall satisfaction and guessed which of the three responses came from the chatbot.”

“The students rated the chatbot’s response the highest in terms of overall satisfaction and helpfulness,” adds Lambert.

The chatbot’s responses were preferred by the students, but Lambert thought the data offered a more nuanced story than originally thought. He found that when students were asked to guess what response came from the chatbot, the lowest rated responses in helpfulness and satisfaction were guessed as coming from the chatbot.

“Students preferred the large language model (LLM) chatbot’s responses when blinded yet demonstrated a bias against it when the source was suspected,” explains Lambert. “This bias is likely rooted in a lack of trust, and trust may influence AI adoption by both students and professors.

“The students rated the chatbot’s responses the highest yet consistently guessed the lowest rated response as the chatbot’s was very interesting and somewhat unexpected. Yet when we read the current academic literature on this topic, we found that user trust is an important component in almost all AI research right now,” says Lambert.

Other researchers in the study from the UC College of Nursing include Robyn Stamm, DNP, associate professor of clinical nursing; Shannon White, DNP, assistant professor in the doctor of nursing practice program; and Melanie Kroger-Jarvis, DNP, associate dean for graduate clinical learning programs. Bailey Martin, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, is also a co-author of  the study.

Researchers in the study acknowledge that while the small sample size is appropriate for a pilot study, it is insufficient for determining adequate effectiveness. They suggest that larger studies, replicated in multiple sites with additional qualitative and quantitative data are needed to thoroughly evaluate AI chatbot tools in nursing education and advising.

“For this reason, the descriptive results should be considered an initial ‘first step’ toward understanding how such a tool may assist in student learning and consultation,” the researchers wrote in their study.

Lambert says he considered using the chatbot because students, like others, are sometimes hesitant to ask questions to another individual, particularly a professor, that might seem silly or make them appear as not so smart.

However, the chatbot won’t judge you based on your questions, he adds.

“Sometimes the topics we cover are challenging or intimidating,” says Lambert. “Educators want something that will lower the barrier so students can ask any questions they like.”

Funding for the study came from an internal grant from the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing to support conference attendance, participant reimbursement and software fees. The authors of the study report no potential conflicts of interest.

Read the story on the UC website.

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Journal

Journal of Nursing Education

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Blinded But Biased: Students Prefer Chatbot Until They Know It Is One

Article Publication Date

1-Apr-2026

Teachers tend to help the same kids repeatedly when using AI-powered tutoring tools

North Carolina State University

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A new study finds teachers tend to provide assistance to similar subsets of students when using AI-powered educational tools, rather than touching base regularly with everyone in their classes. The findings could be used to develop tools that help teachers track their classroom interactions to ensure they are giving each student the attention they need.

“AI-powered tools are increasingly common in K-12 classrooms, but teachers still play a critical role,” says Qiao Jin, first author of the study and an assistant professor of computer science at North Carolina State University. “For this study, we wanted to examine how teachers who use AI-powered tools determine which students need help – and how those teachers actually distribute their time among their students.”

For this study, the researchers looked specifically at teachers using intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) to teach middle-school math. ITS are AI-powered software that responds to student activity to provide customized assistance through hints and feedback, as well as tracking student performance.

For the first part of the study, researchers interviewed nine middle school math teachers who used ITS in their classrooms. The interviews helped researchers understand how the teachers determine which students require an intervention (a teacher visit) and what kind of help the teachers provide.

“While teachers said it would be ideal to spend one-on-one time with every student, they noted that this is not possible,” Jin says.

Instead, the teachers made decisions about who to help based on many factors. Two of the most significant factors were whether a student had required assistance in the past, and a student’s “engagement state.”

“ITS can notify teachers when students have been consistently entering incorrect answers or have not interacted with the system for an extended time,” Jin says. “Those are engagement states called ‘struggle’ and ‘idle,’ respectively. And either of those engagement states might lead a teacher to touch base with the relevant students.”

To see how these teacher behaviors are reflected in practice, the researchers drew on data covering 1,437,055 interactions between students and an ITS. The data covers 339 students enrolled in 14 middle and high school math classes across 10 U.S. schools during the 2022-23 school year. All of the data the researchers looked at is data that the relevant teachers had access to via their ITS dashboards.

“We found that teachers are more likely to interact with students that they have interacted with before, even after considering who is engaged and disengaged in the classroom,” says Jin. “Basically, if a teacher has intervened to help a student in the past, they are more likely to intervene to help that student in the future.

“Teachers have their own definitions of fairness and their own understanding of student needs, based on their training and experiences,” says Jin. “We believe our findings can be used to develop software tools, such as dashboard features, that support teachers by giving them information they can use to make decisions about how they allocate their time in a way that is consistent with their definitions of fairness and student need.

“Teachers have a difficult job and developing better tools to help them do that job effectively is worthwhile.”

The paper, “Sticky Help, Bounded Effects: Session-by-Session Analytics of Teacher Interventions in K-12 Classrooms,” will be presented at the 16th Annual Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference (LAK26) being held April 27-May 1 in Bergen, Norway. The paper was co-authored by YiChen Yu of NC State; and by Conrad Borchers, Ashish Gurung, Sean Jackson, Sameeksha Agarwal, Cancan Wang, Pragati Maheshwary and Vincent Aleven of Carnegie Mellon University.

The work was done with support from the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education, under grant R305A240281.

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Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Sticky Help, Bounded Effects: Session-by-Session Analytics of Teacher Interventions in K-12 Classrooms

JMIR Publications examines AI-driven discovery bottleneck: scientific evidence trapped in a predigital system

JMIR Publications

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Boon-How Chew, MD, MMed, PhD., JMIR Correspondent

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(Toronto, April 6, 2026) — JMIR Publications today announced the release of a timely new article in its News and Perspectives section, showcasing the urgent need to modernize the scientific record. The article, “Our AI-Powered Discoveries Are Trapped in a Predigital System,” details how shifting from a static, paper-based model to a data-native ecosystem can bridge the widening gap between rapid AI innovation and slow formal validation.

Authored by Dr. Boon-How Chew, JMIR Correspondent, the report highlights the growing chasm between the speed of evidence generation and the glacial pace of traditional scholarly communication. The study finds that while AI is accelerating diagnostics and drug discovery, the 17th-century publishing infrastructure has become a direct threat to the promise of data-driven medicine.

The Crisis of Trust and Speed in Global Research

Traditional academic publishing remains a significant bottleneck for digital health innovations, governed by an economic and structural model that creates profound access and equity issues. Beyond fragmented AI solutions, the report emphasizes that while a chaotic ecosystem of AI super-assistants like Paperpal, Elicit, and ResearchRabbit has emerged, these tools often only patch symptoms. They help authors write papers faster but do not change the fact that the final output remains non-interactive and largely unverifiable.

The analysis reveals several breakthrough insights:

• The High Cost of Access: Top-tier research universities report annual subscription expenditures exceeding $10 to $15 million, while author-facing processing charges can range from $5,000 to over $11,000 per article.

• The Reproducibility Crisis: The foundation of scientific evidence faces ongoing threats, with estimates suggesting that 50% to 90% of published research findings are not reproducible across various disciplines.

• The Static Article Constraint: By focusing on opaque narrative summaries that decouple claims from underlying data, the current system makes verification nearly impossible for complex AI models.

"The black box of a clinical AI model cannot be built on the black box of a nonreproducible study," says Dr. Chew. "We need a new operating system for science that is dynamic, transparent, and data-driven."

Transitioning to a New Operating System for Science

While a chaotic ecosystem of AI tools currently offers fragmented help by optimizing the creation of traditional manuscripts, the article argues that the future unit of publication must move toward enriched dynamic research objects. In this new model, data, methods, analysis logs, and peer validation are structurally and permanently linked to ensure rigorous reporting and transparency by design.

"The technology is almost here," adds Dr. Chew. "What is required now is the collective will to build, adopt, and apply a publishing model that is worthy of the future."

Please cite as:

Chew B

Our AI-Powered Discoveries Are Trapped in a Predigital System

J Med Internet Res 2026;28:e96018

URL: https://www.jmir.org/2026/1/e96018 

DOI: 10.2196/96018

 

About JMIR Publications News and Perspectives

JMIR Publications is a leading open access publisher of digital health research. The News and Perspectives section is the newest addition to its portfolio, established to bring the rigor and integrity of academic publishing to scientific journalism. The section features well-researched, expert-driven content from the Scientific News Editor, Kayleigh-Ann Clegg, PhD, and a network of specialist JMIR Publications Correspondents to keep the digital health community informed, inspired, and ahead of the curve.

About JMIR Publications

JMIR Publications is a leading open access publisher of digital health research and a champion of open science. With a focus on author advocacy and research amplification, JMIR Publications partners with researchers to advance their careers and maximize the impact of their work. As a technology organization with publishing at its core, we provide innovative tools and resources that go beyond traditional publishing, supporting researchers at every step of the dissemination process. Our portfolio features a range of peer-reviewed journals, including the renowned Journal of Medical Internet Research. 

To find out more about JMIR Publications, visit jmirpublications.com or connect with them on Bluesky, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

Media Contact:

Dennis O’Brien, Vice President, Communications & Partnerships

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The content of this communication is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, published by JMIR Publications, is properly cited.

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Journal

Journal of Medical Internet Research

DOI

10.2196/96018 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Our AI-Powered Discoveries Are Trapped in a Predigital System

 

Report: Russia Faces Logistical Nightmare in Redirecting Yamal LNG to Asia

File image courtesy Novatek

Published Apr 5, 2026 3:46 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

With Russia’s Yamal LNG exports rebounding amidst the war in the Middle East, new research reveals that a logistics challenge is likely to impact the project as early as 2027. While most of the Yamal shipments are currently heading to ports in Europe, Moscow has announced a pivot to the Asian market. In January, the European Union also approved a ban of Russian LNG imports to the bloc from January 2027. These shifts will add pressure to Russia’s existing transport fleet for Yamal LNG, according to Norway’s Center for High North Logistics (CHNL) - unless energy shortages from the ongoing Arabian Gulf conflict force Europe to change course.

The operational Russian LNG fleet includes 14 Arc7, 6 Arc4 and 5 non-ice-class LNG carriers. The researchers calculated the capability of the fleet to serve the Asian market when redirecting of shipments begins from 2027. Notably, the estimates do not account for maintenance, weather delays, port congestion and structuring transshipment cycles.

“If all flows are redirected to Asia, the fleet will be able to complete approximately 120-130 voyages per year. This is more than two times lower than the export volumes of 2024-2025,” projected CHNL.

The reduction is explained in part by the longer distances to Asia. In addition, Yamal LNG depends highly on Arc4 and non-ice-class vessels for transshipment operations, significantly limiting navigation options in the winter months. Again, shorter European routes ensure higher turnover for the relatively small transport fleet.

For Yamal LNG to retain its market edge, CHNL said that the project’s logistics scheme will require adjustments. This includes expansion of the ice-class tonnage, which Russia is struggling to build due to massive sanctions on its shipbuilding sector. Since 2023, Russia has only managed to complete two Arc7 vessels, which are part of the five partially built hulls originally supplied by South Korea.

Other options to resolve the impending logistical bottleneck include increasing transshipment capacity for a long voyage around Europe to reach Asia. Data from Eikland Energy shows that Russian gas producer Novatek would need to charter 25-35 additional tankers from 2027 to effectively redirect LNG to Asia using the Suez Canal or Cape of Good Hope route during the winter season. This would help Yamal LNG maintain its current export levels of 18 million tons per year.

Europe remains the largest customer of Yamal LNG, with France and Belgium being the primary destination. Out of 270 shipments from the port of Sabetta in 2025, 88 were destined to France, followed by 57 to Belgium and another 50 to China. The three countries together absorbed more than two-thirds of the total annual shipments.

This dynamic has changed with the ongoing war in the Middle East. In February, 100% of all Yamal LNG exports went to Europe, according to data by the campaign group Urgewald. All 21 shipments made in February, equivalent to 1.5 million tons of LNG, were destined to EU ports. Zero shipments went to China or Asia, down from four cargoes during the same period last year.

Lone Russian Corvette Flies the St. Andrew’s Flag in the Med

RFS Stoykiy (Russian Ministry of Defense file image)

Published Apr 5, 2026 5:45 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

At a time of active conflict involving both Lebanon and Israel, and when the French Navy has deployed at full strength to prevent further attacks on the British Sovereign Base Area in Cyprus, the strength of the Mediterranean Flotilla has sunk to a single ship flying the St. Andrew’s Flag of the Russian Navy.

On March 31, the Improved Kilo (Project 636.6) class submarine RFS Krasnodar (B-265) and its shadowing tug Altay (IMO 4622404) passed westwards back through the Strait of Gibraltar, having transited the English Channel on entry in mid-December last year. In its three month stint in the Mediterranean, Krasnodar first made a port call in Algiers, and passed back through Algiers with the Altay on its return journey.

On the basis of NATO anti-submarine patrol paths tracking the submarine, the Krasnodar appears to have spent most of its time in the central Mediterranean, where in December the dark fleet Omani-flagged tanker Qendil (IMO 9310525) was attacked, as was the Russian-flagged LNG carrier Arctic Metagaz (IMO 9243148) later on March 3. A Kilo-class submarine is not well suited to helping deter or react to such attacks.

The Krasnodar has conducted previous patrols in the Mediterranean. Although now based in the Baltic, the boat was formerly assigned to the Black Sea Fleet – and in effect may still therefore be nominally assigned to the Mediterranean Flotilla.

The sole Russian naval vessel remaining in the Mediterranean is the Steregushchiy-class corvette RFS Stoykiy (F545), last identified off Tartus at the end of March, but seen west of Cyprus and alongside in Tartus earlier in the month. The Stoykiy has had an eventful patrol, passing through the English Channel in late November, circumnavigating Africa, participating in Exercise Mosi-26 in Cape Town in early January, then making a port call in the Seychelles. It was next scheduled to exercise with the Chinese and Iranian navies in Exercise Maritime Security Belt 2026 off Bandar Abbas. 

Clearly aware something was afoot, the Chinese 48th Flotilla did not turn up, and the Stoykiy stayed only one night on February 18, conducting a very brief exercise with the Iranian Navy as it left the next day - a gesture which was clearly much appreciated by the Iranians. Most of the Iranian vessels participating in this short passage exercise were sunk days later as the Stoykiy was beating a retreat through the Red Sea to Tartus.

The Russian Navy, contrary to predictions, appears to have retained some restricted visiting rights in Tartus, and the Russian airfield at Khmeimim further up the Syrian coast remains active. The Russians appear not to have sought a new facility, with the port of Tobruk in Libya considered a strong candidate.  Instead, the Russians are leveraging their long-term training presence to make more frequent port calls in Algiers. Algiers is some distance away from the technical support which might be available at the Algerian naval base of Mers el Kebir, where a Russian team help maintain Algeria’s six Kilo-class submarine

Algerian Navy Kilo Class submarines alongside at their base in Mers al Kebir, March 2025 (Google Earth/Airbus)

“They decided to come after us. Almost like in 1937”

Sámi activist Valentina Sovkina, originally from the town of Lovozero in Russia’s Murmansk region, was forced to leave the country after a wave of searches targeting indigenous rights activists.

Sámi activist in exile. Valentina Sovkina had to flee from the Kola Peninsula. 

Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

LONG READ

Olesia Krivtsova journalist
Sebastian Lerpold journalist
11 March 2026 - 
THE BARENTS OBSERVER

Because of her work defending the rights of her people, Sovkina has faced bans on events, sustained harassment on social media, discrimination and even physical violence. The Barents Observer tells the story of her life — and her struggle to defend the right to be Sámi in Russia today.

A “search operation”

On December 19, 2025, the 62-year-old crossed the familiar border between Russia and Norway for what she believes may be the last time.

This time it did not feel like one of her usual trips abroad. There were no plans to meet relatives, no conferences on indigenous rights to attend. Sovkina was leaving Russia for the foreseeable future.

Two days earlier, on December 17, officers from Russian security services arrived at her flat in Lovozero. On the same day, the Federal Security Service (FSB) carried out searches at the homes of at least sixteen other people.

Security officers were looking for activists linked to the Aborigen Forum, a network of experts, civic leaders and organisations representing indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East.

Sovkina woke up to a knock on the door and at first assumed it was her son, who had forgotten his keys. Instead, armed security officers forced their way into the apartment.

“I asked them several times directly: ‘Is this a search?’” she recalls. “They replied: ‘No, it’s an inspection as part of a search operation.’”

Fled to Norway. Valentina relocated to the Norwegian East Finnmark region. Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

They explained that if it had been an official search, it would have looked very different.

“They said: ‘We would have burst in, thrown you to the floor, put you in handcuffs and turned everything upside down.’”

For four hours one officer carefully recorded the serial numbers of electronic devices, while another repeatedly demanded the passwords to her phone and computer.

Sovkina refused.

“So you have something to hide?” one of the officers asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Photos of me in lingerie that I send to my husband.”

She remembers one of the officers commenting that her husband was “quite elderly”.

“Well, I’m not exactly young either,” she answered. “Do you think people stop having a life when they get older?”

During the visit she tried to unsettle the officers by speaking about omens and shamanism. On one officer’s wrist she noticed a bracelet made of shungite, a mineral often believed to promote physical well-being.

“You won’t have good health,” she told him, pointing at the supposed talisman.

That same day similar visits took place at the homes of other activists. Indigenous rights defender Daria Yegerova was later arrested by the Basmanny Court in Moscow and accused of involvement in the Aborigen Forum, which Russian authorities have designated a “terrorist organisation”.
Treated as “second-class”

Valentina Sovkina was born and raised in Lovozero, a Sámi town in the Murmansk region.

Much of her story revolves around the tundra and family life — and her childhood in a boarding school for disadvantaged children, which profoundly shaped her life.

She was sent there because of instability at home. Her parents struggled with alcohol.

“I don’t judge them,” she says. “Everything that brought them to that point was rooted in hardship. They simply weren’t needed by society.”

“What does a dysfunctional family mean? It means there are no separate beds, no desks, no school supplies. Everything is shared. We all slept in one bed — if there was a bed. Often we slept on skins.”

Their extended family lived together. Her grandparents spent much of their time in the tundra.

It was in the boarding school that she first experienced discrimination.

“The staff and visitors often treated us Sámi as if we were dirty,” she recalls.

They would say we smelled bad and look at us with disgust. They treated us like second-class people, as if we were somehow unworthy.”

Her family’s diet consisted largely of reindeer meat, fish and berries.

“That was simply the food we knew. Our homes smelled of the stove, of skins and of work. When you sew leather, scrape hides — there’s a specific smell, and it stays in the house.”

At the same time, that upbringing shaped her identity.

Valentina Sovkina. Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

“That’s when I began to understand who I was. We had our own food, our own way of life. Reindeer stood nearby, our grandfather would arrive and we would ride them. We wore traditional clothing, the malitsa.”

She remembers waking up to her grandmother singing luvvts — traditional improvised songs.

“My tundra, my tundra, how I miss you.”
“Waving the flag”


Valentina Sovkina began researching her family roots in the early 1990s, when she found herself in hospital. In the ward with her was another woman from Lovozero who unexpectedly said: “Did you know we are related?”

Sovkina recalls how she began sketching out a family tree by hand — drawing little squares, names and connections.

“That sheet of paper became the starting point of my journey back to myself,” she says.

Later, when she entered politics, people began referring to her as someone who was always “waving the flag”.

“I had the flag everywhere,” she says. “On my computer, on my phone, a badge on my cap. I was constantly showing it — saying: here I am, I’m here, I exist.”
“They came to our land”

For many years Sovkina represented the Sámi — an indigenous people of the Kola Peninsula — in dialogue with government authorities, industrial companies and international institutions.

In 2022 she was appointed a member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, an advisory body to the United Nations.

Much of her advocacy has focused on opposing industrial projects affecting traditional Sámi lands.

Sovkina is a member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Photo: private

She has also criticised what she calls the “decorativisation” of the Sámi — when authorities and tourism projects use Sámi culture as a picturesque backdrop while ignoring the real problems faced by communities.

Many of her speeches have addressed the rapid industrial development of northern territories.

In the Murmansk region a key actor is the mining giant Norilsk Nickel, whose subsidiaries operate across the Kola Peninsula.

According to activists, industrial expansion is destroying lands traditionally used by Sámi communities.

In recent years the Kola Peninsula has also become one of Russia’s key sites for the extraction of rare earth metals. Alongside nickel and palladium, attention has increasingly turned to lithium.

The Kola MMC is a regional subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel. 

Photo: Atle Staalesen

The Kolmozerskoye deposit, located near Sámi settlements and reindeer pastures in the Lovozero district, is considered Russia’s largest lithium project and a cornerstone of future battery production.

Expanding mining activity is pushing out traditional reindeer herding.

Compensation payments offered by companies, Sámi representatives say, fail to offset the long-term losses suffered by communities.

“I oppose Norilsk Nickel,” Sovkina says.

They came to our home. They want to take our land — the land where our reindeer graze. My grandfather is buried there, on an island in Lake Kolmozero.

“I understand the country needs lithium and other resources. But there are other places where extraction could happen. I don’t want them coming to our territory.”

According to Sovkina, state interests and corporate interests consistently override indigenous rights.

She points to the Association of Kola Sámi, which signed a cooperation agreement with Norilsk Nickel and receives funding from the company.

“Local indigenous leaders are often appointed from above and do not represent their communities,” she says.

“They are forced into partnerships with major corporations, which makes them dependent.”

In 2022, while crossing the border, Russian border guards took her aside for questioning.

FSB officers asked about her views on the Russian state, US policy — and finally about Norilsk Nickel.

“Ah, so that’s what this is about,” she replied. “You should have started with that.”
"To attack someone who wouldn't hurt a fly"

In 2014 Sovkina was travelling from Lovozero to the Norwegian town of Kirkenes, where she was due to catch a flight to New York for the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples.

That morning they discovered the tyres of their car had been slashed.

After finding another vehicle they set off, but police stopped them repeatedly along the road, searching the car and delaying them without formal documentation.

Border-crossing. Storskog is the only border-crossing point between Norway and Russia. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

“The reasons kept changing,” Sovkina recalls.

“At first they said it was a routine check. Then they said it was because of Ukraine — maybe we were transporting weapons.”

Near the town of Zapolyarny the car was stopped again.

As Sovkina spoke on the phone about what to do, a young man suddenly appeared and tried to snatch her bag containing documents and her phone.

“He started pulling at the bag. I held on — he pulled harder. Then he knocked me down and began dragging me.”

She fought back, kicking and shouting.

Meanwhile the driver was being held inside a police vehicle.

When he ran out to intervene, the police detained him — not the attacker.

“They grabbed the driver, not the attacker. The man simply ran away,” she says.

“It looked like a staged performance. A circus.”

The case was never properly investigated.

During later interrogations, one investigator suggested the officers had merely been following orders.

“I asked: whose orders? He said nothing. And I realised — even if they had killed me, it would still have been an order.”

It was after this, says Sovkina, that her attitude towards the state changed completely.

Now I am absolutely certain that I am not safe. You have shown that you can attack someone who wouldn't hurt a fly. You have completely changed my inner compass. I believed that the state was capable of protecting me."

She did fly to New York after all — a day late. She still has her passport. Other Russian participants in the conference were less fortunate: some of them were unable to leave, and some had their documents confiscated at the airports.
“The authorities don’t want us to be independent”

Pressure on Sámi activists long preceded the recent criminal cases under “extremism” and “terrorism” laws.

Sovkina says the first signs appeared when authorities began systematically obstructing attempts to organise meetings.

Whenever she arranged seminars or discussions in Lovozero, venues suddenly became unavailable.

Valentina Sovkina in Norway. Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

“They would say there were fire safety problems, or a burst pipe — always something.”

Eventually she concluded it was pointless to request space in public buildings.

“People who wanted to help were warned they might face consequences — that they could lose subsidies.”

She is convinced the FSB was behind the pressure.

Sovkina recalls how an unknown man came to an open event in Lovozero and asked permission to participate. He introduced himself as a ‘physical education teacher,’ but, as Valentina says, ‘it was immediately clear from his bearing that he was a security officer.’

"I told him, 'Sit down. We have no secrets. You can write everything down. We won't even speak in Sámi — we'll speak in Russian so that you can understand everything."

For two days, climate and oceanography experts discussed climate change, risks to the territory, long-term and short-term planning for Lovozero, and measures to be taken by the administration in the event of avalanche danger and other threats. After the meeting, the ‘physical education teacher’ approached Sovkina and asked a question:

"I still don't understand — what are you doing here that's so dangerous?"
Fighting the governor

Until 2010, Sámi Day, celebrated on February 6, was marked by the raising of the flag near the Murmansk regional administration building. However, activists later began to encounter problems.

Sovkina recalls how, in 2010, activists planned to raise the flag at the administration building. The governor did not appreciate the idea. "They went so far as to cut down the flagpoles so that we couldn't raise the flag near the building," says Sovkina, "so that there would be no topic for discussion. It turns out that even the government discussed it...

"How can we allow the flag to be raised? What if LGBT people come and demand the same thing?"

The Sámi responded with a protest: they came to the Murmansk administration building with drums and horns. Valentina was offered a compromise: "You raise the flag for half an hour, then take it down." She agreed, and the flag hung for a whole week.

It is not in their interest for us to be independent, it is not in their interest for us to be financially secure. We always talk about our territories, about the ancestral nature of these territories. We do not live in four districts. We live throughout the Murmansk region and have always lived here."

In the autumn of 2024, the authorities added the Free Nations of Postrussia Forum to the list of “terrorist structures" and declared 172 other initiatives to be its ‘structural subdivisions.’ The list included anti-war and decolonial projects, as well as movements for regional autonomy.

In addition, the Ministry of Justice recognised the ‘Anti-Russian Separatist Movement’ as extremist — an organisation that the ministry essentially invented itself by analogy with the ‘International LGBT Movement’ and the ‘International Satanist Movement.’
"This story is as old as the world itself"

Since 18 December 2025, Daria Yegereva, whose home was searched at the same time as Sovkina's, has been in custody. The indigenous rights activist and representative of the Selkup people is accused of ‘aiding terrorist activities.’

Sovkina condemned the persecution of activists.

"It is particularly outrageous that the Russian authorities are accusing activists of terrorism, for which people who have not committed and never called for violence are now being given monstrous prison sentences of 15 or 20 years in Russia. These sentences are not intended to “combat terrorism” but to intimidate. They have targeted those who have led and continue to lead a traditional way of life for centuries, herding reindeer, fishing, hunting and gathering wild plants on their own land. They preserve their knowledge, their knowledge of nature, bit by bit."

We must call a spade a spade: this is not a fight against terrorism, it is political revenge."

This is direct punishment by the state for the fact that representatives of Indigenous Peoples dare to appeal to the UN, speak about violations of their rights, participate in the work of international bodies and tell the truth about what is happening in Russia. The Russian authorities are deliberately criminalising the very idea of cooperation with the United Nations.

"This story is as old as the world itself — accusations of separatism, unwillingness to allow indigenous peoples to participate in decision-making, and the desire to maintain control over territories. This is exactly how colonial policy manifests itself," says Valentina's husband, Bjarne Store-Jacobsen.

Bjarne remembers the day of the search at Sovkina's house well — he watched what was happening from his home in the municipality of Nesseby, 100 kilometres from Kirkenes. Barents Observer journalists met with Valentina there.

The atmosphere at Valentina's home in Nesseby, Norway. Some of the work was done by her students. Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

Like Sovkina, Store-Jakobsen is a well-known Sámi activist. At the beginning of his political career, he became one of the key figures in the Sámi rights movement, in particular opposing the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in Alta, northern Norway.

Despite their similar political backgrounds on opposite sides of the Russian-Norwegian border, the activists did not meet until they were older. In Norway, Store-Jakobsen worked as a journalist throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and in 2005 he was elected to the Sámi Parliament of Norway. Three years after returning to politics, the parliament sent him to represent the Sámi in international Arctic cross-border cooperation.

The council was established in 1993. Thirty years later, in 2023, Russia was removed from participation in this cooperation after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Despite living on different sides of the border, Sovkina and Store-Jakobsen maintained their relationship, meeting regularly. In 2020, they got married.

"She had a few days to leave the country. Otherwise, she would have been arrested," believes Bjarne Store-Jakobsen.

Valentina Sovkina and Bjarne Store-Jakobsen married in 2020. Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

The decision to leave Russia was difficult for Valentina, and she sometimes thinks about returning. But the possibility of ‘terrorism’ charges and the concern of her loved ones pushed her to take this step.

"It seems that my departure is an escape. But that's not in my nature. Sometimes I think I'm ready to drop everything and go back — and let everything burn. I want to know what's going on in my family. But if I'm deprived of the opportunity to speak, it won't do anyone any good."

Sovkina is currently awaiting a decision from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI), to which she has applied for a residence permit on the grounds of family reunification. The UDI documents hang on the wall of her office.

Despite the fact that she now lives a normal life, Sovkina cannot shake the thought of returning to Russia. Even the understanding of the possible consequences — including imprisonment — does not deter her.
Echoes of Stalin’s terror

Today Sovkina draws a direct historical line between the repression of indigenous activists and events remembered by the Sámi as the “Sámi conspiracy”.

During Stalin’s purges in 1937–1938, Soviet authorities accused Sámi intellectuals and community leaders of forming a “counter-revolutionary nationalist organisation.”

They were charged with espionage, ties to Norway and Finland, and plans to separate the Kola Peninsula from the Soviet Union.

Among those arrested was Vasily Alymov, director of the Murmansk Regional Museum of Local History. About thirty other people were also repressed along with him. Most of them did not return: 15 people were shot, and 13 were sentenced to 10 years in prison.

When asked how often she herself was accused of separatism, Sovkina replies, ‘Practically all the time.’ After one of her speeches at the UN, a pro-government media outlet published an article in which accusations of separatism appeared on every other line.

"I read it and thought: my God, it's 1937 all over again. Another “conspiracy”, another search for enemies where people are simply talking about their rights."

"In essence, they have now decided to take us “under their wing”. The “Sámi conspiracy” involved doctors and scientists. And all because they were preserving their knowledge. What power that must be! That's why I have no moral right to give up."

"But I have an inner feeling that this will all end quickly. I believe in that."