Meeting of the students of the Institute of History and International Relations with Ilya Havrylenko

On 23 April 2025, the Institute hosted a meeting with Ilya I. Havrylenko, a lecturer at the Department of International Organisations and Diplomatic Service, Candidate of Political Sciences, who has been in military service since the first days of the war.

In February 2022, he voluntarily joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He served in the 128th separate Transcarpathian mountain assault brigade. Later, he served in the Donbas Special Forces Battalion of the 18th Slavic Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine. In the autumn and summer of 2022, he gained combat experience in the Zaporizhzhia direction, and in the autumn of 2022, he and his unit took part in a counter-offensive in the Kherson direction. In 2023, he took part in the Liman Offensive, and currently continues to serve as a tactical training instructor at the National Guard Institute of Ukraine. 

At the meeting with the 1st year students of the International Relations programme, which took place in a friendly and warm atmosphere, Ilya Ihorovych shared his memories of frontline everyday life. The student audience was very interested in the story and asked many questions about military analytics, translation practice in wartime and the mandatory military training for students at universities. It was interesting to hear our colleague's conclusion that he had been working on soft power issues in his academic studies, but now he is pursuing the opposite direction of hard power in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In parting, the students thanked our colleague for finding time to meet with them while on a short-term holiday.