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This paper explores the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on Russia's academic sector, relying on the limited evidence available. The invasion has triggered an academic exodus from Russia, with both immediate and far-reaching consequences. These consequences range from the interruption of ongoing research projects and the termination of international collaborations to the emergence of an intellectual void, raising concerns about the future of academic pursuits in Russia. Conventional models for understanding academic mobility, which primarily focus on professional and economic incentives, prove inadequate in accounting for the complexities introduced by geopolitical strife, international sanctions, and curtailed academic freedoms. This paper calls for an interdisciplinary approach incorporating perspectives from political science, sociology, and international relations for a richer understanding of academic migration in conflict-affected settings. The Russia-Ukraine war serves as an important case study, shedding light on the vulnerabilities of academic sectors, even in the aggressor country where the physical conflict is not occurring, and offering broader insights for the field of academic mobility.

As the tragedy in Ukraine deepens, it's clear that the world should end its dependency on Russian oil. It will be ironic, however, if nations disentangling themselves from this compromised energy source instead turn to another energy source with destructive impacts: harvesting and burning forest wood for fuel, which increases carbon emissions compared to fossil fuels, and degrades forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Events of recent years both in the United States and around the globe have highlighted the fragility of democracy. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has prompted educators to seek evidence-based civic engagement methods for helping students understand the invasion and its implications. This paper offers a set of recommendations on how to teach the war in Ukraine through the lens of civic engagement education. Over the years, a sizeable body of scholarship has developed addressing the critical role civic education plays in safeguarding democracy and producing effective pedagogical approaches for instilling democratic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Using this scholarship as a starting point, this paper offers recommendations on how educators in a variety of settings and across disciplines might modify these civic learning models to address the war in Ukraine. Based on my experience as a scholar-practitioner-educator at an institute of politics focused primarily on American democracy, I also offer suggestions on how to integrate teaching the war in Ukraine using these practices to enhance appreciation of civic engagement and the role of the citizen.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has significantly impacted the outbound student mobility of Russian students. This paper highlights and explains the positive role virtual student mobility can play in shaping and sustaining the international education aspirations of Russian students amidst the entangled geopolitical and financial crises. Drawing upon the Aspirations-Capabilities framework of migration, the notion of mobility capital, and different states of (im)mobility, the study analyses 16 semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted with Russian students who participated in various forms of virtual mobility in 2020-2023. The findings reveal that virtual mobility can bolster Russian students' capacity to aspire to international studies despite the mobility-suppressing climate by acting as a 'rite of passage' en route to international education, increasing language confidence, and challenging media portrayals of hostility towards Russian students. The richness of the virtual mobility experience in terms of communication with foreign teachers and students plays a key role in activating this affordance.

Values such as peace, mutual understanding, and solidarity have long been subsidiary to the aim of pursuing competition and revenue through the internationalization of higher education (HE). With the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, higher education institutions demonstrated strong support for peace and solidarity. Yet, the extent to which we are witnessing a return to an international politics rationale driving HE internationalization remains unclear. Using Canada and Germany as case studies, this paper compares how international conflict impacts HE internationalization practices from a host institution perspective. The developed theoretical framework connects HE crisis literature with novel approaches to HE institutions in global geopolitics. Data were analyzed through critical policy analysis, focusing on university presidents' statements and institutional press releases. The key finding suggests the dominance of the logic of appropriateness whereby a geopolitical rationale governs institutional responses in a context where widely shared democratic values are under attack.

This qualitative study explores the self-conceptualisation of higher education projects (HEPs) relocated out of Russia or created in exile by Russian emigrants after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, analysed by thematic analysis, and discourse analysis of projects' promo-materials, this paper explores how HEPs formulate their goals and aims concerning the conflict zone--their homeland. The research argues that these projects manage to overcome 'exiled consciousness' and appear as a hope-making practice. However, aiming to preserve the relocated academic heritage, HEPs limit their self-reconceptualisation, i.e., further reflection on the continuity of their practice. Along with presenting current narratives, the study suggests further directions for exploration of the imagined future and its materialisation mechanism through educational means in the context of a political and humanitarian crisis, along with the way the international education landscape is being reshaped in it.

This paper explores how faculty in Kazakhstan perceive the current and potential effects of the Russia-Ukraine war and sanctions on internationalization and international mobility in higher education in the Central Asian country. The purpose of the study was to provide some initial insights into the perceived effects of the conflict on international mobility and higher education in the country, which has the longest border with Russia. The study uses grounded theory as an approach to research design. The data was collected via semi-structured interviews whereby the participants were selected from among faculty of Kazakhstani universities using a combination of snowball and maximal-variation sampling approaches. The results of the analysis revealed that the participants interpret the impacts of the conflict predominantly in neoliberal terms with only some faculty members noting potential effects in terms of academic colonialism. Identified themes are best interpreted in terms of the conceptual construct of capital. We suggest a combination of several capital theories as a potential theoretical framework for understanding perceptions of the effects of war on internationalization and international mobility in higher education.

This qualitative analysis describes the socialist legacy in the governance of higher education within the former Soviet-led member countries that entered the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) between 2001 and 2010. In joining the EHEA these countries signed on for the Bologna Process (BP), but are not members of the European Union. The analysis is based on EHEA BP Country Reports and a survey of Western academic literature and sources from the former-socialist region. It is argued that ministries of education are little engaged with academic and civic communities, in large part because policymakers underestimate the depth of the cultural and institutional changes that are necessary for educational reforms. Therefore, deep convergence of the new signatory countries to the EHEA via the BP has not occurred. Concurrently, West European measures intended to empower educational communities operate perversely in the post-socialist region, characterised by low civic and state capacities. The over-emphasis on bureaucratic checks and controls negates two important aspirations of Bologna: on the one side, university autonomy, empowerment of faculty, and development of local communities; and on the other side, the free flow of international knowledge. Without an adjustment of policies, the prospects for effective reforms are dimmed.

The Western-style internationalisation of Russian universities, which guided the evolution of the country's higher education sector for over three decades, has been challenged by Western sanctions following the 2022 Russian 'Special military operation in Ukraine'. The authors show through the prism of constructivist theory how the norm on the internationalisation of higher education characterised by the strive for Westernised world-class universities was adopted and then came to unravel in Russia. A qualitative case study based on 42 expert interviews and an analysis of political discourse and legal documents reveals how the key features of the internationalisation of Russian universities are being challenged. The authors contribute to the expert literature the notion of 'norm reversal', defined as the process whereby an institutionalised and internalised international norm is 'cancelled' in a specific country. The paper shows that the reversal in Russian higher education, which was initially 'circumstantial' is becoming 'intentional', with legal documents being drawn up to accelerate and claim ownership of it.

Soviet higher education had a distinctive institutional landscape. It combined two institutional types in a uniform model that embedded higher education in the national economy. This paper focuses on the post-Soviet system-level changes in the institutional landscape in all 15 countries of the former USSR. It shows that over last three decades the Soviet two-type institutional model evolved into a three-type model, with the specialized university as a new institutional type. Highlighting the instruments of horizontal and vertical differentiation for each country, the paper explains how structural reforms and market forces led to the rise of the university/multiversity form of institution, and the strengthening of vertical stratification at system level. The comparative analysis shows that there have been different patterns of transformation in the 15 countries, shaped by unique combinations of structural reforms and marketization policies, with certain countries having made more distinctive steps away from the Soviet institutional model. There are now 15 formally different systems of higher education which poses further questions for comparative analysis.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has passed. This process required greater attention and care to the specifics of the organization of distance learning and the resolution of problems that arose for participants in the educational process. By late 2021 face-to-face teaching was returning but Russian aggression against Ukraine interrupted the comparatively carefree life of children and hindered access to kindergartens and schools which required a further focus on remote education. The paper outlines the peculiarities of the organization of distance learning under martial law in Ukraine and presents the problems of the organization of training during a time of conflict as well as the challenges presented by Internet platforms for the organization of the distance learning approaches recommended by the Ministry of Education of Ukraine. The aim of the research was theoretical analysis and generalization of literature on research problems, pedagogical observations, surveys, methods of mathematical statistics. The article provides one of the first analyses of the difficulties faced during this period of immense disruption based on empirical data and explains to what extent Ukrainian teachers under martial law have the possibility to organize distance teaching, what problems they face, what is the psychological state of children.

This paper is devoted to changes in the way in which mathematical assessment is conducted in Russia and Ukraine, the two largest states formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Previously, in the USSR, there existed two parallel systems of examinations, as follows: "exit exams," which were taken by schoolchildren graduating from high schools, and which were conducted using the same texts across the entire territory of each Soviet republic; and "entrance exams," which each college conducted independently (with the approval of the Ministry). In the new states, a gradual transition occurred to conducting so-called uniform exams, in which exit and entrance exams were combined. This change reflected society's quest for a fair and effective system, which could avoid corruption, unfairness toward different categories of students, and the like. In this paper, examinations are analyzed as an expression of society's influence on the teaching of mathematics. Consequently, the paper analyzes, on the one hand, the stages in the appearance and formation of examination procedures, the problems offered on exams, and the influence of exams on the teaching of mathematics; and on the other hand, the attitude toward exams in society, discussion of them in the press, and other general issues. A necessary space in the paper is allocated to background information, with a discussion of how exams were conducted in the USSR and of the general changes that have taken place in both countries.

The aim of this study was to determine the examination of the researches about the use of technology by fine arts teachers. The study was conducted according to the content and citation analysis model. In this context, Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection indexes were included. In the document scanning in the WOS environment, the keywords 'Fine arts', 'Teachers' and 'Technology' were searched. In total, 169 documents were examined and analysed one by one. They were analysed according to year, document type, WOS content category, country, source title, organisation and citation, authors, publication language and categories. As a result of this research, the first study was conducted in 2004, while the most studies were conducted in 2016. It was concluded that the published studies had the most Proceedings papers as the document type. The area where the studies of fine arts teachers on the use of technology are mostly carried out is Education Educational Research, according to the Web of Science content category. The most researched title in the distribution according to the Source Title field is 'International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conferences on Social Sciences and Arts.' The university with the most studies is Kazan Federal University. The 19 authors who conducted the studies have a large number of studies in this field. It was concluded that other authors had only one study in the field. Again, when we look at the distribution of the countries and documents according to the language of writing, the country with the most studies is China and the language of the documents is English. The area continues to evolve.

Patriotism is an important and well-accepted value in educational institutions. As a civic virtue, it has always been included in education/training programs. This study aims to compare research articles on teaching of patriotism that were conducted in the last 20 years. The document analysis method was employed in the study for this purpose. The data were collected through the international databases e.g. Wiley, Jstore, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis. 218 articles were found by searching the keywords "patriotism", "patriotic education", and "teaching of patriotism". Upon initial analysis, it was decided that 110 articles would serve the purpose of this study. Content analysis technique was employed to reveal patterns of the selected articles. The number of articles published on patriotic education in each countries, the publication dates of these articles and the comparison of these articles according to countries, purposes, is presented in this study. The paper at hand shows that only some articles have a critical perspective on patriotism. Implications are made based on results.

This mixed-methods ethnographic case study examines the socio-historical origins and current lived experiences of students at one Russian university to understand the role of a university education as an environmental factor in the development of a civic consciousness. Findings suggest that the institution has attempted to introduce liberal civic education reforms while competing with a system-wide civic passivity developed during the Soviet era. At the same time, the institution is balancing political neutrality and social development to effectively execute its mission in spite of increasing state control. Student voices suggest that human capital development remains a top priority, whereas civic development has been limited. This case study serves as a cautionary tale in light of oppression and compromises that higher education institutions have to make with the state. Moreover, countries with a similar Soviet legacy of an atrophied civic society can look to modest reform efforts to engage individual students in a way that can promote civic participation so long as the state allows civic development to occur. This paper also addresses the implications of higher education's role within the context of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Academic libraries, apart from their main function, which is to provide information services to academic communities, may also perform a number of social roles in the broad meaning of the term. Accordingly, they now tend to serve as the third place offering inclusion and animation activities to academic as well as local communities (including potential students) and to groups in risk of social exclusion (immigrants, persons with disabilities, senior citizens, etc.) or in need of various kinds of care and support. However, for libraries to be able to fulfil those tasks, they need properly trained staff who not only have the required competencies but also the right social attitudes. The paper presents an analysis of the social attitudes of academic librarians from twenty countries across the world as compared to the personnel of other types of libraries. The level of individual social capital, activity in social networks, aspirations in life and social and civic engagement were investigated. It was noted that the respondents tend to undervalue the importance of the work done by libraries for local communities. At the same time, the research showed that academic librarians have a somewhat lower level of individual social capital and trust than public librarians and less extensive social networks. Nonetheless, they are open to relationships with others, which enables them to engage in various social projects.

This paper is focused on a specific component of the bureaucratic apparatus in the Russian Empire -- educational functionaries. More specifically, the work explores the social background of educational functionaries in the Ukrainian lands in the first half of the 19th century. The authors composed data samples on Taurida, Volhynian, and Poltava Governorates covering the years 1830 and 1850. Use was made of a body of little-known archival documentation from the State Archive of Kharkov Oblast and the Central State Archive of Ukraine in Kiev. The authors explored the regional characteristics of the way educational institutions in rightbank, leftbank, and southern Ukrainian governorates were staffed with functionaries. The work attempted to determine how the areas' numbers of members of the various social groups in pedagogical service correlate with each other. It was found that, despite the low popularity of pedagogical service among the nobility, there were quite many members of this estate serving in the public education sector. However, due to a major need for teacher functionaries the government had to express a favorable attitude toward the hiring of members of other social groups willing to serve in educational institutions across the Russian Empire. This explains the significant number of members of the lower estates employed in the sector as well.

Teaching online requires different skills, roles and competencies for online instructors compared to teaching in traditional learning environments. Universities should offer ongoing support in various forms to help academic staff through their online journey. This paper provides insights into a multinational faculty development program for teaching online, elaborating on results of expectancy and satisfaction surveys. From a local program to a subproject within the Swiss National Science Foundation Project Scopes, e-Tutor aimed at expanding competencies in online lecturing and providing OER material for training colleagues. Designed in the form of a descriptive case study, this research was conducted with 34 attendees of e-Tutor. Data was collected using an e-learning readiness and expectancy questionnaire, and open-ended questions after the program to measure satisfaction. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the survey data and content analysis for open-ended data. Participants considered e-Tutor a well-planned and targeted program with good theoretical and practical balance. Duration of such courses, opportunities for adaptation to real-life situations, and localization of the content are areas to be explored further. For future studies, it would also be interesting to see whether participants can apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills to create efficient online learning environments.

France’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was initially conciliatory. However, the current French President’ statements, Macron, gradually changed, suggesting a potential shift in France's stance. The French president recently suggested troops could be sent to Ukraine to fight the Russians, a move that could significantly impact the course of the war. Our paper aims to address this possibility. How feasible would this be from a military perspective? Second, are there any other relevant political actors that will support it? Third, why has Paris changed its position to such a radical stance? We start from the theoretical design of realist constructivism. Postcolonial theories and the concept of locked-in path dependence supported this research. The methods follow the path of historical synthesis, discourse analysis of key political actors, and text analysis of defense white papers. Quantitative military variables are used to understand France’s and the EU’s military-industrial complex capabilities and assess its potential. The collapse of France’s neocolonial empire in Africa and Russia’s growing influence in the region partially explains Macron’s discourse change. This is correlated with the need to follow a more independent European security policy and the worsening military situation in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on methodologies of serious games deployment and evaluation. Particularly, this study will present a specific category of serious games that are based on Collaborative Virtual Environments and they aim to support Collaborative Learning. We call these serious games Collaborative Virtual Educational Games (CVEG). The paper aims to analyze the deployment and evaluation process, through the study of relevant bibliography, and by doing so to reveal the existing research gap, which fails to evaluate the threefold nature--game, collaboration, and software--of CVEG. The proposed framework aims to support the design, deployment, and evaluation of a CVEG, by incorporating two consecutive and recurrent cycles, each consisting of distinct phases. Furthermore, each phase is designed to address specific goals. Finally, the paper presents four case studies, applying the proposed theoretical methodology for designing, deploying and evaluating a pragmatic CVEG.

It has been argued that a transnational elite class is emerging, and that elite schools are 'choreographing' this process. This article nuances this developing theoretical framework with empirical data from an economically elite boarding school in Switzerland. It demonstrates that young men and women at this site linked to a global economy whilst refracting geopolitical tensions in their interactions with one another. This draws our attention to the multi-sited understandings that elite young people develop, despite the widespread assumption that in modern globalisation, wealth can break down cultural and juridical borders. This paper thus importantly contributes to an emerging discussion about the possibilities and constraints of transnational class formation at elite schools. In particular, it suggests that different kinds of elite schools may fill different kinds of roles when it comes to such processes.

In this paper, I examine whether generalized trust and education, as well as social security policies of welfare state institutions matter for cross-national differences in subjective well-being (SWB), because knowledge on this issue is still lacking. For this purpose I integrated the insights of two sociological theories: Social Function Production theory and Actor-Centred Institutionalism. Based on these theoretical notions we derived several hypotheses, which I tested using multilevel analysis of the data from the European Social Survey (2006), in a sample of 37,237 respondents from 22 European countries. My findings indicate that various extensiveness of social security policies matter for the level of SWB, and for the impact of education on SWB. I found negative impact of low education on SWB in all countries, except in Northern and Western European countries. This might suggest that social security policies of the latter countries have diminished the negative impact of low education on SWB. Moreover, my findings indicate positive relationship between individual education and generalized trust; as well as between generalized trust and SWB in countries with all five types of social security policies.

The paper considers key risks of cultural and civilizational integration of the Russian-Ukrainian border region. Proceeding from the sociological surveys conducted, the following typical cultural and civilizational identities of the population of border regions of Russia and Ukraine are singled out: Russian, Ukrainian, Slavic, European, mondialist and Eurasian. The first of the risks found is discrete perception of social time and space. For the bulk of representatives of the regional communities, social time breaks down into parts acting like periods that are devoid of the shared logics and are contrasting towards each other. The second is associated with chronotope pattern structure consisting in the presence of cognitive and value-related dissonance which characterizes the consciousness of the population--this is expressed in acceptance of value attitudes not only mismatching but even opposing each other frequently. The third risk consists in incongruity and controversy of heterostereotypes that are emotionally colored set ideas of communication subjects about their counterparties. Irrelevance of ideas about the future acts as the last risk that is caused by asynchrony of social processes in the area which used to be united that is manifested both at interstate and regional levels.

This article is written to inform educational community particularly in the respect of new tendencies in educational assessment and present a clear-cut picture of the recent studies conducted in the Black Sea Region. The review paper refers to the following countries: Georgia, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. It stresses the prevalent approach detected in these countries and sees the role of assessment as a tool to enhance the quality of education and obtain the reliable data that help professionals to make appropriate decisions in teaching and assessment.

This paper examines Russia's propaganda discourse on Twitter during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The study employs network analysis, natural language processing (NLP) techniques, and qualitative analysis to identify key communities and narratives associated with the prevalent and damaging narrative of "fascism/Nazism" in discussions related to the invasion. The paper implements a methodological pipeline to identify the main topics, and influential actors, as well as to examine the most impactful messages in spreading this disinformation narrative. Overall, this research contributes to the understanding of propaganda dissemination on social media platforms and provides insights into the narratives and communities involved in spreading disinformation during the invasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the position of the United States of America regarding Ukraine’s cooperation with the North Atlantic Alliance during both administrations of the 42nd US President William Jefferson Clinton. The reflection of Ukraine’s relations with NATO from the standpoint of the American establishment in such important foreign policy documents as «The National Security Strategy of the United States for 1994, 1995, 1997 year» (L.T.), as well as in the official sources of the Presidents of the United States - «Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States of America». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to address the possible role of the Eastern European Orthodox Church as an alternative channel to ensure fruitful negotiations to end the Russo-Ukrainian war that has still ongoing since 2022. As the majority religion in Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe as a whole, the Orthodox branch of Christianity has a transnational influence on its followers, including prominent political figures in the aforementioned territories. Utilizing qualitative research methods, this paper is written to provide arguments about whether the Orthodox Church, with its immense presence in the belligerents' spiritual beliefs, will be able to be employed as a channel to end the Russo-Ukrainian war. In this paper, analysis is conducted through the usage of J. W. McDonald's "The Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy" (2012) journal article about multi-track diplomacy and D. Johnston's Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (2003) book about faith-based diplomacy to gauge the Orthodox Church's potential as a channel of diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine. This paper finds that overall, the Orthodox Church fails to fulfil the criteria that Johnston (2003) posits; one of the most fatal is the organization's inability to reconcile the belligerents' deep historical wounds. Due to the Orthodox Church's traditional role that has always been closely tied to the Russian government, its capability to build an acceptable negotiation channel is severely impeded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the main features of digital repression in Russia, especially in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The repression of digital activism is not a new phenomenon in Russia; however, it gained fresh momentum during the Russian-Ukrainian war. Security has been used as a pretext to expand the state's authority at the cost of individuals' rights and freedoms. To control political narratives, suppress online dissent and surveil regime critics, the government has significantly tightened the national legislation through its media regulator, Roskomnadzor. The aftermath of the war, harsh sanctions and increased anti-regime movements have also deepened Russia's aspirations toward 'digital sovereignty'. Meanwhile, regardless of a number of important initiatives in this direction, domestic digital space still remains an ambitious goal to be fulfilled. This paper concludes that, along with other devastating consequences, the war in Ukraine will provoke further digital repression in Russia aimed at achieving the Kremlin's goal of "digital sovereignty". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education is the property of Comparative & International Education Society Higher Education SIG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of a variety of levels of education, namely, high school, vocational and university education, on the probability of being employed in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Design/methodology/approach: The data are from two waves of the Life-in-Transition Survey that covers 29 post-communist transitional countries. The number of binary logistic models is estimated to quantify the effects of different types of education on the likelihood of being employed, while controlling for different sets of covariates. Findings: The findings reveal that the effect of employment associated with university education is higher than that of vocational education, which in turn is higher than that of high school education. However, the differences between the effects of the various levels of education are not considerable. Any specific level of education is always associated with a higher effect in Eastern Europe as compared to the former Soviet Union. The effect of education is also found to be higher for females than for males. In the former Soviet Union, the positive effect of university and vocational education on employment is found to go down with age. Originality/value: This is the first study which compares effect of different types of education on probability of being employed on a diverse sample of 29 post-communist countries over the period of five years.

One of the biggest European conflagrations after the World War II constitutes Russian's unprovoked attack on Ukraine which begun in 2014 and evolved in a full scale war in February 2022. Despite the fact that it represents an armed conflict between two actors, it is difficult to classify it as pure conventional or unconventional war. The main goal of the paper is to reveal the extent to which conflict can be classified as conventional since both sides have been using a long range of elements of unconventional war. Using the historical and analytical method, the paper emphasizes that the conflict cannot be classified fully conventional or unconventional as the actors use a mixture of both to reach their military and political objectives. The scope of our paper limits the research to the Russian military interventions unfolding during the last two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Russia's economy appears immune to any actions taken by countries supporting Ukraine in its struggle to preserve its sovereignty, the sanctions project directed against Russia continues to evolve. The sanctions policy pursued by the European Union, the United States, and their allies is isolating the Russian economy, gradually leading to its 'Sovietisation'. The primary purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of the sanctions on the economic situation of the Russian Federation. The paper is based on available statistical information provided by the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) and Russian news media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper provides a comparative analysis of Soviet military operations in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan and Phase I Russian operations in Ukraine. The principal object of analysis is the employment of military force within the Soviet and later Russian military operational art outside of large-scale doctrinal conventional warfare. The principal thesis of the paper revolves around providing adequate evidence for two core postulations - the Soviet and later Russian militaries have historically relied in the case of escalation and use of conventional military force on the "military operation" as a method to utilise said military force in a low-intensity, non-kinetic approach where large-scale conventional land forces, in combination with airborne and special forces, would rapidly overwhelm an adversary's military and civilian capabilities to offer resistance; first-phase Russian operations in Ukraine in 2022 followed the provided historical model, encompassing all elements and methods previously employed, but were unable to repeat Soviet successes, failing due to a variety of factors, which had previously worked in favour of the Soviet military, but were not sufficiently present or counteracted. The paper conducts a comparative analysis by synthesising the key elements, which make up the matrix of a given "military operation" - political goals, military objectives, preparation and execution, and applies them in each of the three case studies - Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and Ukraine. By analysing each of these elements, the paper provides proof of the identical approaches used by the Soviet/Russian militaries and also its subsequent conclusions on the inability of the Russian military to achieve success in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of asymmetric information as a cause of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In the classic bargaining model of war, negotiations break down when one side privately believes that it is sufficiently more likely perform better in battle than the other side expects. There is strong evidence that this mechanism was at play on the eve of the invasion. Chronic problems with Russian civil–military institutions created both an army unprepared for the conflict and a lack of awareness of this within the Kremlin. In contrast, Ukraine had reports of these problems and also had private information regarding its own resolve. Consequently, the Kremlin's demands on the eve of the conflict exceeded what Ukraine was willing to concede. Russia invaded as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper outlines the modernization experience of philology Master programs in Ukraine, the USA, Poland and Russia. It has been proved that the Masters' training is on the search educational strategies phase, which allows to form a single educational space on the principles of internationalization, institutionalization, integration, cultural convergence, common goals and values. An important field of Masters' training is a competency-based approach. It is based on the idea of flexibility, variability of programs, and profiling, philological integration with other humanities, criteria, standards and principles of improving the quality of education. Attention is focused on the formation of constructive-technological, operational, educational, reflective, educational, qualimetric and creative skills of future teachers. Among the perspective forms of education lecture is distinguished as it is focused on the co-creation and co-thinking of lecturer and students, monographic lectures. Among innovative teaching methods and assessment of Master training are selected case-method, cluster, reference compendium, portfolio, performance tests. The variability of final work is defined as an effective way of learning individualization. It has been proved that the result of Master's training should be the specialist with a high level of social maturity, active citizenship, education, culture and responsibility for his professional and scientific activity.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how vocational education and training (VET) in Ukraine has changed since the Soviet era; and to determine its structure, successes, and challenges. Design/methodology/approach: The author conducted interviews and tours at 15 vocational schools in seven cities in Ukraine. Findings: Ukraine is struggling to establish itself as an independent, modern country; education includes elements from the Soviet era and contemporary European practices; the VET system is taking on the state-regulated bureaucratic model; it has mixed success mainly due to economic development; social support for secondary students is very strong. Research limitations/implications: Since Ukraine will eventually be a key player in international relations, it is important for scholars to understand how the VET system is developing. Originality/value: This study provides an in-depth view of VET in this once closed country which is now susceptible to influence from Russia and Europe.

The violence perpetrated against Ukraine has raised questions regarding the direction of U.S. grand strategy since the end of the Cold War, with the Clinton administration's decision to pursue a policy of democratic promotion in central and eastern Europe coming under specific scrutiny. Was this, as critics suggest, a strategic blunder that prompted Moscow's apparent attempt to re-establish control over its former satellites, or, as was believed at the time, a necessary step towards political and economic reform of the European continent following the Cold War? This paper reveals how the Democracy Promotion pillar of the Clinton administration's policy of Engagement and Enlargement aided the development of Ukraine without antagonizing the Kremlin, and the lessons that the Biden administration could glean from this policy thirty years later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian private military company (PMC), the Wagner Group, went from being a public secret to openly fighting alongside Russian forces in Russia's war in Ukraine. By looking at Russian pro-government media discourses on PMCs, this paper argues that this development is largely made possible by a discursive shift, which happened before the war. Two basic discourses are found in the period leading up to the war – a discourse that denies the existence of Russian PMCs, and a discourse of normalization, which constructs PMCs as legitimate businesses and Russia as a great power. The two discourses previously kept the PMCs in a grey zone, allowing the Russian political elite deniability, while also taking credit for the foreign policy successes the PMCs achieved. However, this paper shows a discursive shift of recognizing PMCs as legitimate actors, which allowed for the Wagner Group to play a key role in Russia's war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines the effectiveness of the sanctions imposed by the European Union and the G7 on Russian oil and their impact on the Russian economy and the developments of the war in Ukraine. The main questions in the paper revolve around Moscow's strategies and policies to evade these oil sanctions and the extent to which they have mitigated the impact of the sanctions on Russia. The paper argues that oil sanctions were not able to inflict sufficient economic pain to push Russia to change its policy toward the war in Ukraine, where the Russian economy's dependence on European oil importers was not a crucial factor in the success of the sanctions. Additionally, the paper contends that the time factor was in Russia's favor, as delaying the oil sanctions allowed Russia time to prepare for the circumvention of sanctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After Russia's massive Cyber-attacks on Ukraine's government and bank sectors in January–February 2022, many analysts alleged that Cyber-power would be a crucial component of Russia's military victory in Ukraine. Contrary to these expectations, however, Russian Cyber-intrusions yielded meagre strategic benefits, with Moscow seemingly prioritising conventional warfare and destruction of energy and civilian infrastructure instead. Using a theory of asymmetric conflict, this paper argues, somewhat counterintuitively, that the reason behind inhibited efficacy of Russian Cyber-operations post-2022 are Moscow's prior Cyber-attacks against Ukraine since 2013. While having helped the Kremlin weaken Ukraine's Cyber-networks and collect local intelligence, these antecedent Cyber-operations have provided a two-pronged learning loop: for Ukraine to cultivate habits of mitigating Russian Cyber-threats, and for Russia to acquire habits of relying on information operations more than on destructive Cyber-attacks. This "pedagogical" mechanism ultimately enabled Ukraine to redress its Cyber-asymmetry with Russia and deny Moscow success in its Cyber-intrusions post-2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the recognition of the rising challenge from China have resulted in a closer alignment of American, British and French strategic interests. This policy paper explores how the strategic relationship between the United States, the United Kingdom and France has evolved amid this changed threat environment. The Russia–Ukraine war exposed the limitations of France's policy of 'strategic autonomy' and reasserted the importance of an American role in European security. The war has re-focused attention upon the Lancaster House framework in which the UK and France have the potential to enhance their contribution to European defence. The UK still regards its 'special relationship' with the US as being of critical importance to its foreign policy. But the UK's diminishing military power makes it a less valuable ally to the US whose attention is increasingly upon the Indo-Pacific region. The paper argues that the alignment between the three countries has been closer over the Russian war in Ukraine compared to attitudes towards China, where tensions between France and the 'Anglo-Saxons' persist. France has been unwilling to adopt the American approach towards China and has stuck to its vision of a multipolar world. The AUKUS deal arranged between the US, UK and Australia had the effect of alienating France. The policy paper contends that the temporary alignment between US, UK and French interests will erode as long-standing conflicts of interest re-emerge. In particular, the unpredictability of US leadership will damage the trilateral relationship if Donald Trump regains the presidency in November 2024. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]