Congratulations from the Rector Olena Karaman

1.1.2026

The New Year at Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University began with a congratulatory remarks from the Rector Olena Karaman.

“So we met the New Year 2026 …

We met it not as we once dreamed, but as we know how — with dignity, endurance and faith.

For our university, it was again a New Year not “at home”.

LTSNU has already been relocated twice, and for many of us the festive night was replaced by temporary dwellings, dormitories, rented rooms and silence, in which memories sound especially loud. Many met this year as an immigrant — far from their hometowns, from the home that lives in the heart every day.

It is especially painful and at the same time fills with pride the thought of our teachers and military students who met the New Year in service, in positions, in uniform, to the sounds not of festive salutes, but of war. You are our strength, our honor and our prayer. We thank you for every day lived under the peaceful sky, for which you pay with your endurance and risk.

I sincerely wish each of you to return home. Not temporarily – but forever.

Return to your cities, your audiences, and your families. I wish you peace, real, suffered, the kind for which you will no longer have to pay with losses.

May faith not leave us in 2026 – not naive, but strong, the one that holds us when it is difficult. Faith in ourselves, in each other, in the university and in Ukraine. Because we have already proven that everything can be overcome if we are together.

The Year of the Horse is a symbol of endurance, strength of spirit, forward movement and fidelity to the path. The horse does not stop in front of obstacles, it goes to the goal, even when the path is difficult. I believe that this is exactly what our 2026 will be like – a year of progress, returns, restoration and Victory.

We persevered.

We are together.

And we will definitely win — TOGETHER.