Four Years On: Why Standing With Ukraine’s Universities Still Matters - February 2025
Charles Cormack
Founder of the UK–Ukraine Twinning Initiative
Chairman, Cormack Consultancy Group
Four years have now passed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. What began on 24 February 2022 as a moment of global shock has become a prolonged war of attrition — one that continues to cost lives, devastate communities and deliberately target the civic institutions that underpin a democratic society.
Universities have been no exception. Ukrainian campuses have been bombed, occupied, looted and repeatedly struck by missile and drone attacks. Students and staff have been killed, displaced or conscripted. Teaching has continued through blackouts, air raid sirens and long months of uncertainty. And yet, remarkably, Ukraine’s universities are still standing — still teaching, researching, examining and graduating students. More than that, they continue to innovate, adapt and improve, even in the most difficult circumstances imaginable.
It was in those first weeks of the invasion that the UK–Ukraine Twinning Initiative was born. I still remember some of the earliest calls vividly: Ukrainian rectors and vicerectors joining Zoom meetings from basements and bomb shelters, apologising for poor connections, explaining that colleagues had just been evacuated, or that a missile strike had cut power minutes before we connected. Even then, the conversation was not about retreat or closure. It was about continuity — how do we keep education going?
Twinning was conceived as a practical, institutiontoinstitution response to an unprecedented crisis. With the support of Universities UK International (UUKi), the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and Ukrainian government partners, we matched UK universities with Ukrainian counterparts based on need, capacity and shared academic interests.
What followed has been extraordinary.
More than 100 UK–Ukrainian university partnerships have now been established. Almost 50,000 Ukrainian and UK students and staff have been directly involved in Twinning activities — from research collaboration and professional development to student support, curriculum renewal and shared teaching. Alongside this, over 100,000 people — students, academics, veterans, displaced people and civil servants — are now learning through the English4Ukraine platform, a national resource created through Twinning, with the generous support of Really English, to strengthen Ukraine’s international engagement.
This scale of involvement did not come from a single programme or funding line. It came from thousands of individual decisions by academics, professional staff and university leaders across the UK who chose to act — often quietly, often without fanfare — in solidarity with colleagues under attack.
Independent evaluation of the sector’s response has described Twinning as a unique and coordinated model: one that combined emergency support with longterm thinking, and humanitarian instinct with institutional seriousness. That combination matters. Education cannot be rebuilt overnight — and it cannot be put on hold for the duration of a war.
Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian universities has been systematic. More than a hundred institutions have been damaged or destroyed. Laboratories, libraries, student residences and teaching buildings have been hit. Power infrastructure has been repeatedly attacked, plunging campuses into darkness for days or weeks at a time.
This reality shaped many of Twinning’s most practical interventions. The Generator project emerged directly from Ukrainian requests: without electricity, dormitories cannot be heated, online teaching collapses, and students are forced to leave. Supplying generators may not sound like a traditional higher education activity, but during a war it can be the difference between continuity and collapse.
The same is true of bomb shelter refurbishments, digital backup systems, emergency equipment deliveries and mental health support. These are not peripheral acts of kindness; they are what allow a university system to survive long enough to be rebuilt.
It is sometimes tempting, in wartime, to treat universities as a luxury — something to be restored once “more urgent” priorities are addressed. That would be a profound mistake.
Ukraine’s universities are training the engineers, medics, teachers, psychologists, planners, lawyers and public servants who will be needed to rebuild the country. They are anchoring cities hollowed out by war. They are preventing brain drain by giving students reasons — and routes — to stay connected to home. And they are safeguarding Ukraine’s place within the European and global knowledge community.
The evolution of Twinning reflects this longterm role. Joint research projects, dual degree programmes, grant writing and research capacity training, and international research partnerships are no longer about emergency survival alone. They are about preparing Ukraine’s higher education system to lead national renewal.
The Dual Degree programmes, developed between UK and Ukrainian universities, allow students to gain internationally recognised qualifications while remaining rooted in Ukraine. At the same time, collaborative research projects — including those supported through UK–Ukraine research and innovation funding — are keeping Ukrainian science connected to global networks, even as laboratories operate under air raid alerts and power constraints.
As the war continues, Twinning is entering a new phase. The focus is increasingly on depth, sustainability and longterm impact: strengthening research collaboration, expanding dual degree provision, supporting early-career researchers, and helping Ukrainian universities access international funding frameworks. New initiatives this year will build on what has already been achieved — not replace it — recognising that recovery will be a process measured in years, not months.
I want to speak personally about the Ukrainian Twinning team at Cormack Consultancy Group.
Behind every statistic in this initiative are people whose lives have been permanently altered by this war. Members of our team have fled their homes under fire. Some moved with their families across Europe and continued working, tirelessly, to develop Twinning. Others remain in Ukraine, working through air raid alerts, power cuts and exhaustion. Several have lost family members, close friends and property — sometimes while continuing to organise partnerships, report to donors, or support universities in crisis.
They do not speak often about this. They simply get on with the work.
Their professionalism, resilience and humanity have been the moral core of Twinning from the very beginning. This initiative has worked because it has been led with Ukraine, not merely for Ukraine — shaped by people who understand, in the most personal way imaginable, what is at stake.
I am profoundly proud of them all.
None of this would have been possible without the extraordinary commitment of UK universities — academic staff, professional services colleagues, senior leaders and students alike — who have given time, expertise, funding and institutional backing over multiple years.
Above all, I want to pay tribute to the Ukrainian universities themselves. They are the real heroes. Despite loss, destruction and exhaustion, they continue to deliver highquality education, to innovate, and to believe in the future. Their resilience is not symbolic; it is practical, daily and hardwon.
I also acknowledge the leadership and support of Universities UK International, the FCDO, and our partners in Ukraine, including the Ministry of Education and Science and the Fund of the President of Ukraine for the Support of Education, Science and Sports. Their backing helped turn a moment of crisis into a sustained, credible programme.
Four years into this war, fatigue is real. Attention shifts. Political priorities change. International resolve sometimes appears less certain than it once did — and that is deeply frustrating for those of us who see, every day, the cost of hesitation.
Ukraine is not only defending its territory. It is defending the principles on which open, democratic societies — and free universities — depend.
The lesson of the past four years is clear: when universities act together, with purpose and humility, they can protect far more than education alone. They can preserve hope, dignity and the foundations of recovery.
Twinning was never meant to be a shortterm gesture. It is a longterm commitment — to stand with Ukraine through war, and to stand with it again through the rebuilding that will follow.
That commitment has not wavered.
And it will not.