In the before times, there were caps and gowns and canapés, but Mariupol State University could offer only a pared-down ceremony on Thursday for the class of 2023 on its campus in exile almost 400 miles from its ravaged home city.
Of the 500 graduates, only about 60 attended here in Kyiv to collect their diplomas in person at a new university home that is a work in progress. The rest took part online if they could, scattered by war around Ukraine and abroad.
It was a bittersweet moment for the graduates of Mariupol, a city that became synonymous with the war’s brutality and devastation before falling to the Russian invasion last year. Even in virtual form, the university has offered a sense of moving toward something beyond the war, and an oasis from the cruel realities they have all seen and felt, that were never really out of mind.
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 steelworks where Mariupol’s defenders made their last stand before surrendering in May 2022.
“It was very hard to focus, but our lessons were a distraction from the war; I can even say a kind of salvation,” she said.
Karolina Borovikova, 23, left for an exchange program in Italy four days before the invasion and stayed there, but her husband, Nikita, remained in Mariupol and also fought in the battle for Azovstal. On Thursday, she received a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in Italian translation, but Nikita was not there. He is a prisoner of war in Russia, and she has not heard from him since May.
“Every day I dream about the first day that we will be reunited, and I think about how I will help him to overcome the ordeal he is suffering now,” she said, as tears streamed down her face. “I don’t know how to help him, and I don’t know how to get him out of there.”
