By Adam Aydin | 2025-04-01

PRAGUE -- Russian authorities are forcing Turkmen students to transfer to universities near the front of the Russo-Ukrainian war to fill up lagging enrollments.

In early March, the Stavropol police arrested about 10 Turkmen citizens studying at North-Caucasus Federal University (NCFU), accusing them of staging an unsanctioned protest.

However, Turkmens, who make up the majority of the university's foreign student population, say they were not holding a protest but rather were trying to get onto the campus to dispute the expulsion of some of them, which they say is illegal.

NCFU has expelled about 45 to 50 Turkmens this school year, Turkmen students say.

The school expelled them solely because they refused to transfer to universities in Kursk and Belgorod provinces -- frontlines in Russia's war against Ukraine, the students contend.

Ukrainian forces entered Kursk province last August and held on until mid-March.

Ukrainian or pro-Ukrainian forces have encroached into Belgorod province several times. Most recently, the Ukrainian army entered the province March 18 and remains there.

Transfer or be expelled

Murad (not his real name), who is from Mary province in Turkmenistan, told Kontur that NCFU accepted him in 2024 but that he was unable, like many other Turkmens, to start on time because of roadblocks the Turkmen authorities created.

He is one of the Turkmens whom NCFU expelled.

The majority of the first-year students from Turkmenistan did not arrive in Stavropol until December, when the university's exam period had already started.

Their tardiness became a pretext for pressuring the students to transfer to universities in Kursk or Belgorod.

"Many of us had problems getting out of Turkmenistan and transferring our tuition payment, so we couldn't start classes until December," Murad said.

"As soon as we got to NCFU, the administration started constantly threatening to expel us, and it accused us of having poor Russian skills even though when we were admitted, [it] told us all that our Russian was satisfactory."

"Then the threats turned into an offer to transfer to universities in Kursk and Belgorod provinces."

Many of the Turkmen students were not pleased by the prospect of studying close to the fighting even though some agreed to transfer, said Murad.

However, apparently the NCFU administration was unable to entice enough willing students to transfer, so it continued its pressure campaign.

Only Turkmen students were subjected to this treatment.

"There are students here from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan, but they aren't experiencing this pressure," Murad said.

"Some students agreed to transfer because our parents spent a lot of money to send us here," he said. "Tuition is $3,000–$4,000 [€2,780 to €3,710], but how much did they spend on bribes to get certificates and a Russian visa? We ended up in a hopeless situation."

An orchestrated intention

The Turkmen students are theorizing that this year NCFU made a point of accepting a large number of applicants from Turkmenistan in order to ship them off to universities in frontline regions that needed students, said Murad.

They say that the university administration, and particularly Albert Kumukov, the pro-rector for international cooperation, who is responsible for admitting foreign students, intended all along to send a certain number of Turkmens to universities in Kursk and Belgorod.

"Right now everyone is talking about how because of the [wartime] danger, the universities in those regions have an under-enrollment problem and won't get money from paying students," said Murad.

"Everyone thinks the head of the international cooperation department planned this in advance," he said.

Neither Kumukov nor the rector's office of NCFU could be reached for comment.

This year alone, about 800 Turkmen freshmen enrolled in NCFU, while fewer than 1,500 foreign freshmen in all were accepted, Murad and several other Turkmen students said.

In September, the universities in Kursk and Belgorod announced that they had met their acceptance targets for first-year students, but they did not specify the numbers they had enrolled.

No visas, no education, no refunds

In comments to local media, Kumukov denied that it was illegal to expel the Turkmen students from the university and said that "the expelled international students must leave our country quickly."

Meanwhile, NCFU announced that it was canceling the visas of the expelled students.

NCFU told the 45 to 50 Turkmens whom it had expelled to leave Russia promptly, Murad and other Turkmens said. The students asked the university to reimburse their tuition.

"We were tricked," Murad said. "After we promised to help [NCFU] and transfer to other universities, they took our passports. When we got them back, we saw that they had put a 'canceled' stamp on our visas."

"We have no other options. We'll have to go home," he said.

"But let them give us our money back. Many of us have parents who went into debt to send us to school. They say they'll transfer the money when we go back. But we don't believe them -- they were deceiving us from the beginning."

More than 30,000 Turkmen citizens are studying in Russian educational institutions, official data say.

Turkmenistan recently tightened restrictions on study in Russia after reports that Turkmens were fighting in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Last September, the Turkmen service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported, citing sources in Turkmenistan's security agencies, that there were many "confirmed cases of active recruitment" of Turkmen citizens to participate in the war in Ukraine.

They fight primarily for Russia.

"In light of this, the security agencies received a directive not to let young people go to Russia under any circumstances," RFE/RL reported.