Ukraine: Project manager reports on mood at universities

Russia is massing troops on the border with Ukraine, NATO and the EU are struggling to find a response. How is the tense situation perceived in the country itself? Nicolai Teufel is a project manager at the University of Bayreuth's (UBT) Education Centre for Higher Education and coordinates cooperation between UBT and Ukrainian universities. He has just returned from Ukraine and can report on the mood among university staff in the country.

UBTaktuell: You returned from Lviv a few days ago. How do the current political tensions affect life in Ukraine?

Nicolai Teufel: When we talk about "current" tensions, it reflects the attention we are currently paying to the issue in Germany rather than the reality: Russia occupied and annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014 in violation of international law and is supporting a war against Ukraine in the Donbas with regular and irregular troops that has so far cost around 13,000 lives and caused 1.5 million people to become internally displaced, according to UNHCR. Nor is the threat of open escalation new after the Kerch Strait incident in November 2018 and a similar concentration of troops in April 2021, as well as quite openly expressed neo-imperial plans.

It sounds like the tense situation is already permanent. How do people live with it?

Everyday life on the ground has not changed - especially since Ukrainian society has learned to deal with uncertainties. Ukraine continues to be a very safe, open and popular tourist destination, not only from the EU and Turkey, but increasingly also from Jewish pilgrims and Arab countries. Within the framework of workshops, excursions and summer schools, more than 120 students and academics have been to Ukraine under my leadership since 2015 and have not only felt safe, but have returned with positive impressions, new knowledge and contacts. Some of them even with the plan to come back as tourists or scientists. You feel the war especially in places like the garrison church in Lviv or the avenue near Saint Michael's Monastery in Kyiv with pictures of fallen soldiers, which form a sharp contrast to the lively life on the streets and in the cafés. Nevertheless, it is clear that even if the troop deployment of around 150,000 soldiers is "only" a threatening gesture and life remains normal, the associated insecurity leads to a lack of foreign investment, tourists not coming or people forgetting that Lviv is 100km closer to Bayreuth than to the contact line in the Donbas.

How do students and academics at your partners rate relations with Russia?

The consensus is that no one wants a further escalation of the war, that there can only be a diplomatic solution and that peace is desired. Also with Russia. However, not on Moscow's terms - renouncing NATO and EU integration, ceding Crimea and the so-called People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The neo-imperial "appetite" of the Kremlin is rather increased by appeasement - this is the predominant attitude of my interlocutors. The consensus at the universities is also that Ukraine should follow a Western integration course. We should not forget that the "Revolution of Dignity" on the Maidan in 2013/2014 was largely carried by students from all parts of the country who demonstrated for association with the EU and against the pro-Russian president. Among the approximately 100 people killed in the protests were students and university teachers from our partner universities. And yes, despite all their blemishes, the processes in Ukraine since 2014 can be called a success story. Just one example: More reforms have been implemented in the education sector in the years since the Maidan than since independence in 1991. And of course there are also very practical advantages, such as the visa-free regime with the European Union obtained in 2017, which simplifies higher education cooperation quite considerably.

Can international higher education and science cooperation contribute to pacifying the political conflict with Russia?

I see the task of science less in pacifying current political conflicts than in analysing them objectively and verifiably and communicating this to the public. So instead of "pacification", it is rather "better understanding of the conflict". International scientific cooperation can play a role in conflict prevention and in regaining trust and understanding - as in Europe after the Second World War. But this requires an end to hostilities, time and an environment that also enables critical science and civil society. Then I could also imagine multilateral cooperation again, involving Ukraine and Russia, ideally first in a third country like Germany and in less sensitive areas like environmental issues. Unfortunately, many potential project sponsors from civil society, such as the Sakharov Centre in Moscow and the German-Russian Exchange Association in Russia, were classified as foreign agents. This shows that critical voices are not welcome. Let's hope that this will change.

Have you noticed any tensions between students or lecturers who come from different regions of the country and have different mother tongues?

No. But here we might have to elaborate a little further for the German audience: A common narrative refers to the alleged "division" or "rift" of Ukraine into East and West, Russian and Ukrainian, which is then often simplistically cited as the cause of conflicts and division. What is forgotten is that Ukraine has a regional heterogeneity far beyond this dichotomy, which is completely normal by European standards. Moreover, Russian-speaking does not mean that integration with Russia is the goal. A large proportion of the soldiers in the Donbas fighting for Ukraine's territorial integrity claim Russian as their mother tongue. And perhaps one last point: even the area commonly referred to as the "traditionally pro-Russian east" has become smaller and smaller in recent years. Even in the separatist regions, where Russia is trying to repeat the scenario from the 2008 Georgian war by issuing passports, a majority of the population is in favour of remaining in Ukraine, according to studies by the Centre for East European and International Studies Berlin. I cannot see any conflicts between students from different regions. On the contrary, the British Council has been promoting intra-Ukrainian exchange semesters for several years in the programme "Ukraine Student Academic Mobility (SAM)", which is very popular.

In which areas do you see prospects for the further expansion of the UBT's cooperation with Ukrainian partners?

This is certainly the field of "learning and digital technologies". In Ukraine, I am fascinated by how people learn everywhere in the cities with mobile devices and how new knowledge is created in networks: with podcasts in the tram, in a café together with friends on a laptop, via video conference in the park, at "start-up battles" in business incubators or in cooperation between universities and companies. It may sound surprising to outsiders, but Lviv is my personal Silicon Valley with 25,000 IT workers, hip cafés and countless coworking spaces where I like to work when I'm on the road. But Silicon Valley doesn't have an old town with the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I am therefore particularly pleased that we will be organising a "Bavarian-Ukrainian Conference of Digital Education" in Bayreuth on 23 and 24 June 2022 together with the Bavarian Higher Education Centre for Eastern Europe (BayHOST) and the liaison office of the Bavarian State Chancellery in Kyiv.