2.25: Mariupol State University: The Invincible University

Hello everyone. I’m Alex Usher and this is The World of higher Education podcast.

On February 24th, 2022, the Russian Federation launched an unprovoked full-scale invasion of its neighbor, Ukraine. In an instant, the entire country became a battlefield. We all remember the names of the cities and towns that came under attack in those early months of the war. Irpin. Bucha. Kharkiv. Kherson. And, more than anywhere else: Mariupol.

Twenty-six months ago, Mariupol was a town of 425000 people. Historically, it was a city with a peaceful mix of Russian- and Ukrainian speaking citizens, with just a dash of Greek-speakers as well, a reminder of the city’s history as a center for Greek emigration in the eighteenth century. Located on Sea of Azov, it was perilously close to what had become the “front line” between Ukraine and the puppet break-away Donbas People’s Republic. That put it right in the path of the invasion. But despite – or perhaps because of – this long proximity to violence many residents of Mariupol did not believe the violence would enter the city itself.

By the 26th of February, the Russian Army has the city surrounded. The siege which followed lasted two and half months and cost the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians. By May, the city was flattened. A ruin. And most of its inhabitants had become refugees. And not just its inhabitants: in some cases, entire institutions went on the run as well.

Today, I’ll be talking to Dr. Mykola Trofymenko, the President of Mariupol State University. He agreed to join the show to talk about the events of early 2022, how he steered the institution through the siege and after it, and how the institution, now known as “the Invincible University” came to gain a new home in Kyiv. It’s a harrowing story, but also an inspiring one – and one that gets to the heart of the question: what makes a university – bricks and mortar, or people?

It’s an incredible tale, but I can’t do it justice. Let’s listen to Mykola.

Alex Usher (AU): Dr. Trofymenko, tell us about Mariupol State University. I understand it's a fairly new university, created in the 1990s, and one which focused mainly on social sciences and humanities. Tell us about the university prior to 2020. What was it good at? What were its strengths?

Mykola Trofymenko (MT): It was founded in 1991, exactly at the same time after the independence of Ukraine was proclaimed. This university had a huge task because it was founded in the Eastern Ukraine, and it was modern. It was result of democratic changes and of national movements. We had a huge Greek diaspora. In southeast Ukraine, we have more than 100,000 Ukrainian Greeks within their dialects. Mariupol was founded by Greeks. But during the Soviet time, all this national education and culture studies, they were prohibited. One of the core aims was to humanize the industrial region of Ukraine because it was in Donetsk region with the coal mines with heavy industry and traditional, very technical background. That’s why one of the main tasks was to raise the new generation of Ukrainian citizens. Because we are facing these problems because these regions, they were not very much integrated and so they had no common spirit of Ukraine. Due to the university, we raised thousands of graduates who were in the Ukrainian context, and they are very much great Ukrainian citizens that we are very much proud of.

AU: So, a nationalizing effort of Ukraine, of Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians, Russian speaking Ukrainians, Greek speaking Ukrainians, but an integrative nationalist project in effect. You became rector, in 2020, about 30 years after the university was formed. When you put your name forward, what did you imagine you would be doing as rector? What were your main priorities?

MT: This university, it was my life because I entered this university in 2002 and I graduated from it in 2006 as a bachelor. In 2008 as a master. I was a very active student. I was the first head of the student’s council of the university, and I was trying to make it better and to develop the voice of students. After, I was invited to become a head of international relations office of the university, because I graduated from international relations from this university. After I worked for four years as a head of the international relations office, I defended my thesis for PhD in 2011 and I became vice rector. I worked for nine years. When our previous rector he decided to stop, I decided to run for this position and I won with 90%, I think. I became the youngest rector of Ukraine ever.

Of course, I wanted to make my university very unique and a strong center for education, for culture, for development, for international cooperation, for internationalization, and to make it very much important for community, for the region, and to be very much influential and prepare very good students to make this organization very much effective. I think we've done a lot and we're still actually on this way, if we can say. When I came into the office, we faced the coronavirus, after that the full-scale invasion. So, it has been challenging, but the fate is preparing us for something great. That's why we believe that. Now we are building up a very much new university with a new philosophy, with a new meaning and I think we are on the right way.

AU: Let's go back to February 2022. It's now late March 2024, so 25 months ago. In the weeks before the invasion, it must have been clear at the time that if war came, Mariupol would be in the front line as it was to some extent in 2014. What kinds of contingency planning were you doing in those last few weeks before war came? Could you conceive at that point of being a university in exile?

MT: You've said very correctly that we were living in the front line up from 2014. Mariupol was very much close to the real war with all these with the soldiers, with everything. We were living with this from 2014. And of course, we understood that if something will start that we will be again on the front line. But we didn’t expect that something cruel of this scale will happen, that someone can order to destroy 500,000 people's inhabitant city. It was unbelievable. Of course, I didn't expect that we will be in exile because our regiment for example, or our Armed forces who were protecting Mariupol, they were very much prepared, and they knew how to fight from 2014. They had a lot of possibilities to train with weapons and they were prepared with their positions very much prepared again. The problem was that we were taken under the siege so quickly and we didn't have so many powers or forces to protect from the circle.

I'm also the member of the city council. On February 22nd, we held the meeting of the city council, where we analyzed the situation, our situation with the shelters, and with some political ideas. But actually, the official authorities were convinced that we shouldn't expect something very much dangerous. We shouldn't evacuate people because our evacuation trains, they would leave Mariupol almost empty. And I was also actually believing all this. Of course, we were trying to show that we are very much calm and prepared and that we don't need to be afraid. But we were also preparing as a university. We analyzed what we can evacuate if something will happen. I held a meeting of our heads of departments, and I told them very calmly, not to start panic, to think what we can take with us if something will happen and if we should run university from another place and actually with these thoughts we left home.

AU: When did that happen? Because Mariupol was cut off from the rest of Ukraine very early in the war, by about the 26th of February, if I understand. So, when was the actual decision taken? That must have been a snap decision, and a lot of things would have had to fall into place very quickly. So, when was the date when the actual decision was made?

MT: Actually, I celebrated the five years of my son on February 23rd and early in the morning of 24th, we heard the heating center, all these shellings of Mariupol. We turned on the internet and tv, and we heard some lecture from crazy Putin about the history of Ukraine, who founded Ukraine, and what they want to do. I went to the university. We met with our vice vectors, heads of departments and immediately we decided to load our minibus with the computer servers of the university. They were prepared. We prepared some new equipment. We had about 30 laptops or 15 computers, some very important documents from HR documents. I sent this minibus to Dnipro and I signed officially the order to evacuate the university to Dnipro on the 24th.

I signed this order to evacuate the university. I ordered to all the heads of departments to prepare all the important documents and to evacuate everything to Dnipro. After that we continued to gather all the important as we thought, documents and from archive. For example, the students’ books that with the signatures when they receive their diplomas from the foundation of the university. It was right decision because now we can give these copies of diplomas to these people when they refer to the university. Hundreds of people lost their diplomas in the fires of Mariupol.

We went to Dnipro with my chief accountant, and we left everything there hidden in the right place. We decided to come back on 26 because I wasn't feeling good because I was in Dnipro and my 4000 students and 400 employees and faculty members, they were in Mariupol under the siege with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. As a member of the city council, as a rector, it wasn't right. That's why we decided to come back. The only mistake I made was to take my wife with my son with me. Because my wife, she took me on the throat, and she told me that she will not let me go and that we should go together. It was a mistake because my son he has seen the things that I as a grown up want to very much to forget. But it was a decision to make.

AU: You made a good point here, which is that part of a university is embodied in its books and its documents and its servers. But a university is also really its people. When you left and you said, “look, we're going to start we're going to keep this university going. We're going to make sure that it's safe.” What was the reaction of your staff? How many came with you after the 26th?

MT: After I came back on 26, I made a video and I published it on Facebook next to the building of the university with the inscription, “Mariupol State University” for my people, to show them that I'm in the city that I'm with them. It was heartbreaking because it was so important to the university community and for the Mariupol residents to feel that you didn't actually leave them. Our mayor, for example, he decided to leave, and he didn't come back to Mariupol. After the 26th, the electricity, gas, water supplies, all these pipes and everything were hit by the shellings and we didn't have electricity and water and gas supplies and we had no connection. It was the main problem. We had the first chance to leave on March 15.

I visited the meeting of in Mariupol city council, where the representative of international Red Cross organization, he announced that they will try to find the way out of Mariupol because the city was closed. It was difficult because we didn't see the soldiers of Russia, because they shelled constantly without any pauses, and they destroyed everything. In this hell, people try to prepare food and to find the water or something else or fight the fires in the buildings that were hit. The International Red Cross organization announced that they will find this way and we decided to go, and we tried to inform as many people as we can. We were lucky because there was no connection for the Russians so they couldn't check your identity. It was good for us because with my pro-Ukrainian position, with the position of the member of the city council, and rector, they try to gather all the members of the city council to legitimize their authorities.
We started the telegram channel where we put all the contacts that we had with my vice rectors or with the people who were in Ukrainian controlled territory, and we started to gather information. What problems people had with the places in the cars, with the gas, with some other problems. We tried to solve some problems. For example, we had a lot of wounded colleagues with their relatives, we tried to help them to be evacuated in Donetsk by sending them some money to receive some healing and to pay for the journey from occupied Donetsk, for example, through Baltic States, Poland, in Kyiv.

We had only several weeks to think where to go, but we were confident that we want to restart. This is our core of our actions during the last two years; that the university is not the walls at all, it's people. With these people, you can rebuild and build up everything you want. The new walls, the new premises, laboratories, which is what we are doing in Kyiv now. We are building up a new university with a new philosophy, with new senses. We have 90 percent of our faculty, staff, and students that decided to be with us.

AU: Now, it's mid-March, you've left Mariupol, you have a choice at this point, whether to locate in Dnipro or in Kyiv. You have a choice to be an in-person institution or an online institution. I know you are in Kyiv now and you share a campus, I think with the Kyiv civil engineering Institute. How do you split your activities these days between online and in person? What is the new model for the university?

MT: We had the propositions to go to Kamianets-Podilskyi, to Rivne, to a lot of places. But we decided that after what Mariupol faced and what our university community faced, we decided to be as much useful as we can to our Ukraine. In this sense Kyiv, the capital of our country, we consider it very much appropriate because here we can help and we can fight in this hybrid war because it's running not only in the frontline physically, but it’s also running very much strongly and sometimes even stronger in information and education than on the frontline. In this sense, the university is very much helpful. In Kyiv, we received the building from our friends and colleagues that I will be very grateful for them and to them, to the rector of this university of construction and architecture. Petro Kulikov, he's the head of the union of rectors of Ukraine. He invited us because he understood how important Mariupol State University is in different senses, including in the sense the tragedy of the people. We had 18 killed colleagues and students, we have 250 students and colleagues, the fate of them is unknown. We have a lot of students that are in captivity now. We have a lot of tragedies. But in this sense, he decided to help us, and he gave us the building of 4000 square meters. We are rebuilding it now with the help of the European Union. We hosted during this short period, the vice president of the European Commission, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. We're trying to create this modern, very comfortable educational space for our faculty, students, and staff and for the community, because we decided to become civic university. To be the core, the magnet for all the residents, because now Mariupol lives in the university and we are actually the very much responsible for the identity, and for the people, to help them because we have a humanitarian hub, and we are doing much more than usual university here.

AU: How do you keep the whole enterprise afloat financially? You still have to cover your costs. You got lots of employees, but your fee revenue must be down. I imagine you're teaching fewer students than you were two years ago, and I imagine government subsidies must be lower because of the cost of carrying on heavy military operations. What's your budget compared to what it used to be? What do you have to do without now that you didn't two years ago?

MT: What I've done right as a rector and I understand it now actually is during the first year of my office, I reduced, and I optimized all the operational expenses of the university, and we made it the budget very much effective. Of course, we use all the window of opportunities we have. We participate in different projects. We fundraise. We try to organize and to have new partnerships with the different institutions, with the persons, with the officials, to start new partnerships, new programs, and to receive some resources for the development of the university and for its existence. The resources are not only money, but equipment, people, possibilities, mobilities, some international programs for our staff and students. For example, I will tell you the numbers. In my contract as a Rector with the minister of education, I have key performance indicators. One of them is to try to earn for the special fund of the university. For example in 2023, it was 500,000 hryvnias plus to compare with the date when I was appointed. So that means the special fund in 2020 plus 500,000. In 2023, we earned not 500,000, but 53 million, 5000%. So, I think we are doing our job very much effectively now.

AU: What does the immediate future look like for the university? Can it continue in this form indefinitely in exile? You made the point earlier that, it's a symbol of Mariupol. It has to endure. It's got so much civic pride attached to it. But on the other hand, the longer you stay in Kyiv, I imagine the longer your students and your employees become part of your new home as well. If Mariupol does not return to Ukrainian control say in five years, will you still be Mariupol State University, or will you be something else?

MT: I think it's our obligation to preserve the university. I didn't mention but we are trying to restart our educational process in the hybrid format combining online and offline because we have a lot of problems. There are a lot of people spread all over Ukraine and Europe. If you will tell them that you should come back to Kyiv because we are starting offline, you have to prepare some housing for them. And of course, we can't do it immediately for everyone. We are repairing and reconstructing dormitory for staff and students to give them opportunities because all Mariupol residents, they've lost everything, and we should help them in this sense. So, we are trying to be very much flexible.
If for example, you ask your students from Europe to come back to Ukraine to study offline, we can lose them because they will continue their studies in Europe. In this sense, Ukraine will lose the most precious thing we have, our young people. We need them very much in Ukraine to rebuild and to build up the new country. The educational space is for community because it's important to give possibility to the inhabitants of Mariupol to come to the walls of the university and to feel at home. When you've lost your home, it's important to have this feeling mentally and not to get crazy, and to feel yourself among the people who are natives, who are very much you know them.

We received another gift from the government of Ukraine. We received four hectares and 13,000 square meters that very shortly will become the property of Mariupol University in Kyiv. We are designing the visual project of the campus of the future. The tragedy of Mariupol State University gave us possibility to think about what and how university should look like and what should it have? For example, it's difficult to the universities that are 100 years old and are very much traditional. For us, it's a possibility to build and to look forward. This is the name for this campus that was it's the idea of the president of Ukraine. He named it during his visit to the university in November last year, “Invincible Campus of Invincible University.” This campus will become the center, not only for the university community, but for Mariupol and regional Donetsk region IDPs, for veterans, for the soldiers, for the different courses, for all the issues that are in the sphere of our responsibility. Mariupol University will exist even after four, six, seven, ten years. We understand that Mariupol will come back to Ukraine, and we should be ready politically. Not only politically though, we want to prepare, and we are already preparing now with a lot of companies and businesses about thinking and running the programs to prepare specialists for the reconstruction of Ukraine and to govern and to manage the occupied territories. It's very much important. In this sense we will exist and it's our responsibility to preserve the identity. If we will succeed, but I think we will. We will continue our development and the university will live.

AU: I understand that another university has started up in Mariupol in the last few months, obviously under the control of occupation authorities. If the front line falls tomorrow and Mariupol returns to Ukraine, and you were able to go back, what do you think would happen? Would it be possible for staff of the two universities to work again in a new merged institution or not?

MT: It's a very difficult issue. I can answer emotionally, or I can answer as a rector that understands the situation. The so-called Mariupol University in Mariupol, you understand that Russian Federal Security Bureau work very much professionally and are creating in Mariupol propaganda pictures because it's impossible to rebuild 5, 10, 20 buildings in Mariupol where you destroyed everything and killed 120,000 people. You have 200,000 people that fled Mariupol. You have only 100,000 left with a lot of representatives from Central Asia that are spending money of the Russian budget by reconstructing something. It's a huge cemetery and I’ve witnessed the mass graves and the scary pictures. So, it's difficult. We are now telling that we will rebuild Mariupol and people will come back. I don't know if they will come back, because for example, I understand my responsibility, but I don't know if I want my son to come back there as a father because it's a cemetery.

In this sense though, we are lucky to have only several traitors. They are traitors. They are not the people who try to survive, or who had some personal circumstances that didn't let them to leave. They're traitors because they are now raising the young generation of the students, telling them that Ukraine was shelling Mariupol, and it was taken by Ukrainian troops under the siege. It's something crazy, something you can't imagine how it's possible to tell this. It's the narrative of federal security bureau and they are working professionally to keep young people in Mariupol because they are still there. Russians are acting as an imperial state as they acted during the emperor times when they created colonies. In this sense, they trying to keep these young people in Mariupol and to attract another young people from regions of Russia by giving scholarships for the first years of studies in these so-called universities. They gave some hundreds of scholarships. These people are coming, they are making families, and they're putting their roots in these territories, and they can call it Russian, 100%. They have been doing it for centuries. It's nothing new in Mariupol. But they are professionally using all the opportunities. I met a lot of our graduates and alumni that came from the captivity. I know how many proposals our graduates receive to become rectors of these university because they need support of them of their brainwashing. I don’t know when Ukraine will liberate Mariupol, I don't think that when we come to Mariupol, we will meet the colleagues because they understand what they've done, and they will leave. We will not meet them.

AU: Mykola, thank you so much for your time today.

MT: Thank you.

AU: It just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek and you, the listener, for tuning in. If you have any questions about this episode or suggestions for future ones, please don't hesitate to get in touch at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Join us next week when our guest will be Dr. Varghese. He's the Vice Chancellor at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration in New Delhi. He'll be joining to talk about his new co-edited book on private higher education in India. Talk to you then.