The university has a modern vibe. Teenage programmers sit on bean bags and wander up and down an external staircase built for a recent hackathon. Only one item of furniture is incongruous amid the bright colours and glass cubicles at the institute of economics and technology: an old turquoise-painted desk.
A student who once sat at it went on to became an international celebrity – and Ukraine’s wartime president. “Volodymyr Zelenskiy was special. He was bright, hard-working and wanted to be the best of the best,” Andrii Shaikan, rector of the state university in Zelenskiy’s home town of Kryvyi Rih, told the Guardian.
