There used to be caps and gowns and nibbles, but Mariupol State University was only able to hold a simple ceremony for the class of 2023 on Thursday at its exile campus, nearly 400 miles from its devastated home city.
Out of 500 graduates, only about 60 were here in Kiev to pick up their diplomas in person in a new university house still under development. The rest participated online if possible, scattered throughout Ukraine and abroad due to the war.
It was a bittersweet moment for the graduates of Mariupol, a city that became synonymous with the brutality and devastation of war before falling prey to the Russian invasion last year. Even in virtual form, the university offered a sense of moving towards something beyond the war, and an oasis from the brutal reality they’ve all seen and felt, never quite out of their minds.
Valeriya Tkachenko, 21, continued her studies in ecology and education, even as her husband, Vladislav, underwent treatment and rehabilitation after losing a leg in the battle for Azovstal, the sprawling steel mill where Mariupol’s defenders made their final stand before surrendering in May 2022.
“It was very difficult to concentrate, but our lessons were a distraction from the war, I can even say a kind of rescue,” she said.
Karolina Borovykova, 23, left for Italy four days before the invasion on an exchange program and stayed there, but her husband, Nikita, remained in Mariupol and also fought in the battle for Azovstal. On Thursday she obtained a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in Italian translation, but Nikita was not there. He’s a prisoner of war in Russia and she hasn’t heard from him since May.
“Every day I dream about the first day we will be reunited, and I think about how I will help him overcome the ordeal he is going through now,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I don’t know how to help him, and I don’t know how to get him out of there.”
The university ceased operations on February 24, 2022, the day the full-scale invasion began, and Russian forces began firing rockets, grenades and bombs at Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov in southeastern Ukraine.
Mykola Trofymenko, the rector of the university, immediately moved his computer servers to the northwest city of Dnipro, which has remained out of reach of the Russians. He briefly returned to Mariupol, but then fled, like almost everyone who lived there, when Moscow’s troops destroyed a city that once housed 440,000 people.
In April 2022, classes resumed online and despite the psychological strain and loss, most students plunged back into their studies.
“The students are heroes because they keep working after all they’ve been through, and we celebrate them – but the real party will be when the war is over,” Trofymenko, 38, said in an interview.
Sofia Petrovna, who graduated on Thursday with a degree in international relations, public communications and regional studies, said: “The university has become an integral part of my life.”
“At some point it became what each of us needed,” she added, “a source of fortitude that helped us distract from the scary news feed and move on.”
Founded in 1991, the university had nearly 5,000 students before the war and was recognized for its Greek study program, in part due to the large minority of ethnic Greeks living in Mariupol. Mr Trofymenko said there are now 3,200 students.
Eight students and eight staff are known to have died in the war, including two students who died while serving in the Ukrainian army, he said, and about a hundred people who were fourth-year students are no longer considered active, their fate uncertain.
“They are probably not alive anymore,” Trofymenko said.
The university has been preserved in digital form – the servers are now in Kiev – but the physical house has been largely destroyed and taken over by the Russian authorities. About 10 personnel remained in Mariupol and were accused of collaborating with the occupying authorities.
Reconstructing the university in Kiev “plays an important role that is essential for us to preserve the identity of Mariupol,” he said. “These students have lost everything and what they saw in Mariupol is hard to forget. They need nooks and places they can call home.”
The Ukrainian government gave the university a building in the Solomyansky region of Kyiv, which had been used as a military training center and had been little used in decades. Soviet-era posters of US military bases and nuclear facilities still hang on the walls. An employee found a 1991 issue of the Soviet newspaper Pravda still lying on a desk at her new workplace.
The standing room-only start, in one of the few renovated parts of the new campus, emphasized not only the stubborn resilience of the Ukrainians, but also the ongoing tension of the war. While the ceremony was going on, some attendees were scrolling through social media posts on their phones, showing footage of the rocket attacks on Odessa and other cities in recent days.
The university building, which also houses a Mariupol displaced assistance center, is being renovated and prepared to open in the fall in a hybrid online/in-person format. The smell of fresh paint is in the air and the university has adopted a new logo, a dove, a symbol of the peace that Ukraine craves. One of the first priorities was to organize the printing facilities so that diplomas lost in the war could be reprinted by the graduates.
There are plans to build dormitories for students, housing for teachers and their families, and even a smaller version of Mariupol’s former main square next to the main building. And of course, as the war continues, the university has a supply of generators and Starlink satellite Internet connections, as well as a bomb shelter in the basement.
“We must keep our students and staff,” Mr Trofymenko said. “We can liberate the city, we can rebuild – but without the people, who are we doing it for?”
Registrations for next year are now open.