Ukrainian Universities in a Time of War

Ukraine has been at war with Russia since 2014, when Russia annexed a portion of its territory. However, on February 24, 2022, we started experiencing war on an entirely new level. The full-scale Russian invasion that began that day upended life across Ukraine and dramatically affected the operations of universities.

I worked as a professor of history and philosophy at Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University until August 2024. I rarely left the city of Odesa in 2022, taking the opportunity instead to observe what happened in our region after the Russian invasion. In what follows, I reflect on what I have seen and experienced at my institution and offer a few broader observations about working in higher education in Ukraine during the war.

The 2014 War

Russia’s aggression in 2014 put universities in the occupied territories in jeopardy. Their faculties had to decide what to do in such circumstances. Remaining under occupation meant settling for an existence beyond the reach of Ukrainian law and ethical norms. For many university personnel, leaving their institutions became the only option. Those who hailed the “new regime” were triumphant. In Odesa, discussions of survival strategies for university personnel under occupation were hardly speculative. The prospect of Russia attacking Odesa appeared real even in 2014, given how Russian propaganda doubled down on promoting Odesa’s image as a “Russian city” and how close the so-called Russian Spring was to breaking out here. Although the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Odesa failed to overthrow Ukrainian rule, danger still loomed over the city.

As a scholar of history and philosophy, I had no doubts about what I would do if Odesa became an occupied city. The thought of continuing to work at a university and explaining to students why we had become a part of Russia or its satellite state was unacceptable to me. However, I still remember a conversation with a colleague who mentioned a botanical garden director in Donetsk who chose to continue his work even under occupation: “He cannot flee and take his garden with him.” It’s hard to tell which choice would feel right to me if I were in this person’s situation, and I cannot imagine what future could await him once Donetsk rejoins Ukraine, since his activities fall under Ukraine’s legal definition of collaboration. Under the current law, an educator who adheres to a Ukrainian curriculum under occupation is not considered a collaborator, in contrast to those teaching a Russian curriculum. The universities under occupation, however, aligned their curricula with the Russian ones. Even the plaque commemorating Vasyl Stus, a Ukrainian poet and Soviet-era dissident who died in a Ural labor camp, was torn down at Donetsk National University. Although the institution bore Stus’s name, the reality of occupation demanded that nothing Ukrainian remain in Donetsk.

In an act of defiance supported by Ukraine, some universities in Russian-occupied regions relocated to Ukraine-controlled territories. For instance, V. I. Vernadsky Taurida University, originally located in Simferopol, Crimea, reopened its doors in Kyiv in 2015, and Donetsk National University reopened in Vinnytsia in November 2014. The DNU website states that once it returns to Donetsk, the Vinnytsia branch will continue operation. It is a noteworthy act of solidarity: The university in exile will forever maintain its connection to the city that accommodated it. Overall, eighteen public higher education institutions and one private institution have relocated from the occupied territories since 2014. In 2016, the Council of the Rectors of Higher Education Institutions Relocated from the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone was established. Some of its member institutions had to relocate again in 2022.

Early Days of the 2022 War

February 24, 2022, brought massive new challenges for Ukrainian universities. Whereas missile strikes had previously been limited to the eastern part of the country, now Ukraine’s entire territory was vulnerable to such strikes. In the first minutes of the invasion, it became clear that the conflict was not about territorial disputes: Russia aimed to destroy Ukraine as a country.

Immediately following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, universities suspended operations for two weeks. At Odesa National University, the faculty and deans’ offices held regular group calls. We were hardly prepared, even though it had become abundantly clear over the few previous months that the war was inevitable. In those early days, everyone’s bafflement was palpable. What could we do? Some decisions felt laughable in the context of what was happening—for example, donating the money allocated for an International Women’s Day celebration to the local Territorial Defense Force units.

University management had to make some high-impact decisions: In addition to determining when and how to suspend and then resume instruction, they had to make decisions about foreign exchange students. While Ukrainian students are citizens of Ukraine and can look out for themselves, foreigners are the university’s responsibility. During the first hours of the invasion, Andrii Krasnozhon—rector of South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University, or SUNPU—started making arrangements to evacuate foreign exchange students to the western part of Ukraine to ensure their safety. The students, however, flocked back to Odesa in a few months because they felt more at home there, and everybody was hopeful that the city was beyond the enemy’s reach. The university provided all the necessary support and showed a willingness to take care of exchange students in uncertain times. Later, Krasnozhon said that students from other universities occasionally came to SUNPU for information (and even psychological counseling) as word of the university’s caring attitude got out. The staff didn’t mind putting in extra effort; persevering and saving the universities were the only matters on everyone’s minds.

The transition to martial law caught instructors flat-footed. Everyone decided for themselves whether to undergo tactical medical training, pack a go bag, or make other preparations. The daily Zoom calls in the early days of the invasion were more about group therapy than preparing for war—at least in my department and at my university

Interactions between faculty members and students had to be improvised as circumstances changed in the first days of the invasion. On February 24, I had a double class scheduled, but my students and I got in touch that morning and agreed that it was not the best day for medieval philosophy. In our group chat, I wrote that they could message me at any time with any request, even if they just needed someone to talk to. If they felt it was appropriate to dive into medieval philosophy, I wrote, I was ready. It was also okay if they were afraid and lacked the capacity to concentrate on academic work, I said, especially since no nationwide decision had been made about university operations. The students thanked me, and I kept them informed about developments in the ongoing group chat.

Later, I learned more about how students were reacting to the start of the war. In the summer of 2022, I recorded in-depth interviews with people who had chosen to stay in Odesa instead of evacuating, despite the danger. Memories tend to fade quickly in turbulent times, and I realized that I had a unique opportunity to talk to people about their experiences and record what they had to share. Among my respondents were students at Odesa National University. One ONU student voiced her displeasure with the university’s failure to provide adequate support. She considered ONU one of the best universities in Ukraine and expected it to provide clear recommendations and updates on the situation. Instead, she recalled, after the invasion began she attended a class over Zoom where the teacher was as confused as she was, rambling about stockpiling drinking water. She decided to focus on volunteer initiatives, which abounded in Odesa, instead of her studies. At the time, volunteering was probably the most adequate response to the crisis: Being involved in an activity that improved the city’s defensive capacity was not only helpful, but also therapeutic. Even initiatives that proved not to be particularly helpful (such as preparing Molotov cocktails) were important to people shocked by what was happening. They provided a sense of agency, which is indispensable during a war.

Remote Instructions

Two weeks into Russia’s invasion, the government decided to resume the educational process in universities. The only possible way to do that was to hold classes online. Some students and instructors had evacuated in the first days of the war, while others remained in the city. The students remaining in Ukraine preferred to stay home rather than in dorms, where there was no way of ensuring their safety. And the instructors who stayed were worried about their own children’s safety, because schools and kindergartens were closed. Besides, there were no bomb shelters in universities and dormitories when the invasion began, so studying and teaching on campus could mean endangering both students and instructors.

Ukrainian universities were ready to tackle the challenge of remote instruction after the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. The instruments, communication channels, and grading methodologies were all in place already. Only protocols for air-raid alarms were missing. Sometime after studies resumed, a decision was made to stop classes for the duration of an air-raid alarm and continue them after the all-clear signal.

Every class began with students talking about how they were doing. Our study groups were small, so it took no more than ten minutes to discuss the news. We knew which towns had been hit by airstrikes and where the Russian hit squads had tried to infiltrate the country. Some students were living abroad and shared their impressions of evacuation. On one occasion, we tried to persuade a student who had evacuated to Italy in the early days of the invasion to stay there a little longer, and we thought we had succeeded until she joined the next class from Odesa and showed us the familiar view from her window. She gave in to the longing to return, which most foreigners who patiently urged Ukrainians to flee throughout 2022 fail to understand. Some students who were absent had joined the Territorial Defense Force, as I learned from their classmates. Students from various parts of Odesa would report to the class when something was amiss: “I don’t want to scare anyone, but there was a loud bang nearby.” In moments like those, everybody rushed to look for clues about what had happened; we had to decide whether it was time to put the class on hold and find shelter.

Resuming studies in spring 2022 was more about psychological support than proper education. Being able to focus on something other than survival provided an island of normalcy in a broken world for students and lecturers alike. It also helped all of us to believe in a future when students would have the opportunity to use what they were learning. I was not as demanding of my students as usual: Young people were facing the realities of war, and they needed someone to support them and help them adapt as they tried to find their footing. At the same time, there was a risk that lowered standards could become the new normal. Junior students could start taking lower standards for granted and be surprised by the eventual return to the usual expectations.

Ensuring Safety

In the summer of 2022, setting up bomb shelters in educational buildings became a priority. It was unclear whether resuming instruction as usual would be possible. However, universities had to do their best to provide adequate shelters with spacious rooms, multiple exits, restrooms, and other critical amenities. The ONU staff was surprised to discover that most of our buildings’ basements could be converted to bomb shelters with little to no effort.

Nobody in our university had prepared for the war. When I was a student, we suffered through Soviet-era medical training classes, which taught us the theory of first aid; such training, however, would hardly be helpful now. I had made a point of undergoing tactical medical training even before Russia launched its full-scale invasion, and these days such training is common for Ukrainians. Every third Ukrainian now carries tourniquets and bandages in their bag—who knows when we will need them? In 2022, we learned to ask questions about bomb shelters and to tell university management bluntly that we were not returning to classrooms unless we could ensure our students’ and our own safety.

After the shelters were ready, the issue of returning to classrooms arose. We all realized that online education had its upsides, but it had started falling apart when it expanded from disparate, self-contained courses to the entire university education system. The 2022–23 academic year began with negotiations over the resumption of face-to-face instruction. There was no nationwide solution, because the situation varied greatly across Ukraine. Individual universities decided on a case-to-case basis whether to resume in-person instruction or keep classes remote.

While universities in Lviv, for example, gravitated toward resuming operations as usual, in Kharkiv, in-person classes were out of the question. Learning spaces for children were established in Kharkiv’s metro stations, which served as bomb shelters. The city’s Aza Nizi Maza art studio, too, moved to a metro station to give children an outlet for their creativity regardless of what was happening outside. Aza Nizi Maza started doing this in the first days of the war, when hundreds of Kharkiv residents had to live underground. Kharkiv-based universities, meanwhile, transitioned to online-only studies. Some universities from the temporarily occupied territories were in the process of evacuating. For instance, Luhansk State University of Internal Affairs and Kherson State University moved to Ivano-Frankivsk.

Odesa falls somewhere between Kharkiv and Lviv on the spectrum of risk of attack. Although not often under direct artillery fire, the city doesn’t feel safe. After several Russian navy ships sank near Odesa’s shore and Zmiinyi Island was liberated, Odesa residents believed the threat from the sea had diminished. The liberation of Kherson in November 2022 provided confidence that Russian troops would not march to Odesa by land. Of course, the danger of missile strikes never went away, and drone attacks had occurred in spring 2022. Nevertheless, returning to classrooms was a hot issue. Most institutions decided that in-person classes would be mandatory for first-year students, but it was up to each university to determine whether other students could or should attend classes remotely.

The situation could be starkly different even at universities in the same city. Resuming face-to-face instruction was crucial for those focusing on applied specializations (as at Odesa Maritime Academy). The faculty of history and philosophy of Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University, to which I belonged, could afford to continue online classes. The number of students and instructors who evacuated abroad could vary within a university. Eventually, the faculties were allowed to choose between offline and online studies. Complicating the situation, however, was the fact that students who took refuge abroad had to be engaged in the learning process. The “mixed” format, where the class is held in person but students can participate online, offered one solution this problem.

Lecturers were under remarkable pressure to engage with students both in the classroom and over Zoom. The availability of online instruction affected the attitudes of students, giving them the impression that they could simply connect to lectures online instead of going to class. One day, waiting in the auditorium at 8 a.m., I realized that I was the only one attending in person, and all the students had opted to attend remotely.

In 2023, the Ministry of Education of Ukraine recommended that higher education institutions transition to face-to-face instruction, concluding that remote learning had resulted in an “indisputable decline in educational quality.” Toward the end of the 2022–23 academic year, the question of continuing universities’ relationships with faculty members remaining abroad arose. Most institutions gave up on the option of granting faculty members unpaid leave ahead of the start of the 2023–24 academic year and decided to end their relationships with these instructors.

Wartime Technological Challenges

Faculty members also faced technological challenges and the added costs of ensuring high-quality internet access and appropriately archiving their work. The COVID-19 pandemic had prepared us for some aspects of remote instruction, but now, in addition to all the problems that came with martial law, we started experiencing electricity outages. The Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that began in fall 2022 necessitated emergency power cuts. There was no way of predicting electricity outages, but instructors still had to ensure adequate internet connection quality for their online classes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, all we needed was a laptop and a stable internet connection at home, but now we had to find capacious power banks or generators in case of an outage. Because mobile internet sometimes did not work during blackouts, we had to find other options for connecting—a sizable investment. And because universities were unable to provide tech support, instructors and students had to build a technical infrastructure independently to participate in the learning process. Those instructors unable to get a stable connection sometimes joined their classes from the “points of invincibility”—locations set up by local authorities and equipped with generators to heat food, charge gadgets, and power the free Wi-Fi hot spots there—or branches of Nova Post, a private shipping company that has supported humanitarian efforts during wartime. As you might imagine, working from such a public place is not the most comfortable experience, especially since you are conscious that your conversation with students might bother somebody else there.

The experience of learning during electricity outages varies greatly, so I don’t want to give a false impression that it is an act of heroism for all the parties involved. The group I taught in fall 2022 and spring 2023 included a few students who kept turning off their video and audio, complaining of low connection quality, and never responded (even in the chat) when addressed during class. It appeared that they just logged in and went about their business. That is a demoralizing experience for the instructor.

During the same period, I had a quite different teaching experience when I was invited to give several lectures at the Invisible University for Ukraine (IUFU), a continuing education certificate program for Ukrainian junior and senior undergraduate and graduate students residing in Ukraine or living abroad as refugees. A few of these lectures coincided with the most brutal blackouts in Ukraine, but none were canceled. IUFU schedules lectures in the evening, and we stayed well beyond the end of class on more than one occasion to reflect on and answer students’ questions. When my colleagues and I held the 2024 Memorialization Practice Lab, which included a learning and discussion segment, I noticed some IUFU students were in attendance. I also met a few of them on various education platforms while working with IUFU in 2024.

Losses and Searches

War creates immense challenges for higher education—there is no way around it. My own experience of working in higher education during wartime has been limited to a particular field—history and philosophy education—and specific institutions. My specialization is the philosophy of history, and I have been working mostly in memory studies for the last decade. In no way do I claim to describe the situation in Ukrainian scientific and higher education institutions as a whole.

Russia’s invasion has forced Ukrainian society to grapple with issues that were previously confined to specialized academic fields: collective memory, the relationship with the imperial past (various Ukrainian territories at some point were part of the Ottoman Empire as well as the Soviet Union), and the shaping of the Russo-Ukrainian War’s memory language. Some universities have been responsive to societal demands during this time of crisis, despite higher education’s traditional inertia and sluggishness. In 2023, the Kyiv School of Economics started offering a memory studies and public history master’s program built on the principles of community and collectively shaping the vision of the future. A master’s program at Ukrainian Catholic University, Future of Heritage: History, Culture, Literature, is another response to the same societal demand. Despite the war’s devastating effects, Ukrainian universities are ready to innovate and make educational advances in response to our rapidly evolving society’s demands. These programs enjoy robust interest from undergraduate applicants.

Such emerging programs are important because they highlight how multilayered and multidirectional the development of universities has become during the Russian invasion. Universities have faced major issues and suffered irreparable losses. Some lines of research—especially those requiring expensive equipment to develop—are withering away. The relocated universities have to deal with colossal problems. Besides preserving its original identity, an institution that moved, for example, from the Donetsk region to Ivano-Frankivsk has to find its target audience. Meanwhile, new research and educational programs are launched, opening new horizons for Ukrainian universities.

Oksana Dovgopolova was professor of philosophy and methodology of knowledge at Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University until August 2024.