By Olha Chepil | 2026-02-18

Maksym Horbashov starts his mornings with engineering lectures from Kharkiv Aviation Institute, logs off when the sirens get too close, then works an evening shift at a teahouse until 9 p.m. He has barely attended school in person since eighth grade -- first COVID, then the war. Horbashov is the norm now, not an exception.

During lectures, air-raid sirens can cut sessions short. "Sometimes the teachers say that if anyone wants to stay, they can and they'll keep lecturing," Horbashov, who is from Kupyansk, told Kontur.

Even as war rages on, Ukrainian universities remain open, though instruction formats vary widely by proximity to the front, said Mykhailo Vynnytsky, Ukraine's deputy minister of education and science from 2023 to 2025, who now teaches at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

"In cities such as Sumy, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv, classes are mainly online because the air-raid siren goes off almost at the same time as the explosions happen. Everything is too close together," Vynnytsky told Kontur.

In more remote regions, some universities are gradually returning to in-person or hybrid formats, with individual institutions making their own decisions.

Enrollment drops

The decline in university enrollment runs deeper than the conflict. Ukraine has faced demographic decline for decades -- the number of high school graduates has fallen from roughly 700,000 two decades ago to around 360,000 today, Vynnytsky said. Between 900,000 and 1.1 million students are currently enrolled in bachelor's and master's programs, according to the state statistics service Gosstat, and about 11% are now studying abroad.

Yet the picture is not entirely bleak. Some 14,500 to 15,000 students from outside Ukraine enrolled in Ukrainian universities over the past year, Vynnytsky noted -- a sign that Ukrainian universities remain competitive.

Students from occupied territories face the greatest risks. They can technically study online, but occupation authorities treat it as a crime.

"In reality they're forced to hide while they're studying... The number of these students declines every year," Vynnytsky said.

Zoom replaces campus life

In frontline cities, war has fundamentally altered what school means. Yana Vikhlyaeva, a psychologist working in Zaporizhzhia, said students arrive to online classes already exhausted from nighttime sirens and shelling, layered on top of the ordinary struggles of adolescence.

"We're all living in a state of chronic stress. For children who live in the frontline cities, it's like being on a swing: today it's quiet, while tomorrow there's a strike," Vikhlyaeva told Kontur.

All universities in Zaporizhzhia operate exclusively online. Students rarely know their classmates, and studying has narrowed to completing formal assignments on screens.

"Students don't perceive the university as a social institution. For them, school is a laptop, phone and black squares on Zoom," Vikhlyaeva said.

Many students balance coursework with jobs at cafes, restaurants and retail shops, watching lecture recordings on their own schedules. When they seek psychological support, academics are rarely their primary concern.

"They're suffering from an acute lack of human interaction, collaborative activity and the sense that they're seen and heard," Vikhlyaeva said.

A generation without classrooms

Anna Fatova, a high school student in Zaporizhzhia preparing for university, spent the first six months of the full-scale invasion without any schooling before eventually joining a remote educational center. She said her peers are leaving the city not out of fear, but out of a search for opportunity.

"A huge number of teenagers my age have left, and they want to leave for opportunities, not because Zaporizhzhia is bad. Sometimes you need to leave in time so you can come back," Fatova said.

Vikhlyaeva said the psychological toll shows in a fundamental way: when teenagers are asked what they want from life, many have no answer.

"The war is profoundly erasing meaning and the emotional color of the future," she said.

The loss of in-person education has stripped young people of the spaces where identities form, ideas are debated and shared experiences accumulate. For many, a move away from frontline cities is driven less by safety concerns than by a lack of prospects, as cities empty out and lose their active communities and growth opportunities.

Human connection remains the most essential factor in resilience, Horbashov said.

"The hardest thing is when there's no one close by who can support you. It's easier for me now because I have friends and a life that I can share with someone," he said.