The University of Free Nations (UFN) – is an educational project, which is being realised as part of the Anti-imperial Block of Nations programme. The UFN is aimed at raising awareness and acquiring competence in the spheres of state-building, international and constitutional law, economics, information technology and social engineering, by representatives of the national liberation movements of nations enslaved by Russia ( in particular, recognized as such according to the Law No.86-90, approved by the USA Congress 1959).
The UFN teachers are lecturers of leading universities and practices, recognized as the top experts in the spheres listed above. The head of the UFN Education Project is a Doctor of Law, an Associate Professor and a member of the Central Election Commission (2018-2019), Leontiy Shypilov.
The educational programme consists of theoretical, practical and evaluative components, that allow participants to achieve the optimal balance between theoretical knowledge and practical application while at the same time creating the opportunity to assess what level of theoretical knowledge and practical skills the UVN participant has achieved.
Methods and means implemented in the educational project:
- distance-learning format: taking into account the mobility factors of the participants, the spread and use of technological means for social communication, and the war situation, the distance-learning format has been evaluated as the most optimal means of reaching the target audience;
- case-study: the interest of the target audience will be achieved through active use in the practical and evaluation components of the case-study method, through simulation of historical or crisis situations and the user’s role behaviour in them;
- the interactive nature of the course, which anticipates the active interaction between the participant and the teacher;
- systematicity: the training course consists of training modules which are combined into six main blocks:
1) The theory of the nation and practice of the national liberation movement ( encompasses modules devoted to the theory of nationalism, the practice of the national liberation struggle of Ukraine.
2) International law, international relations and geopolitics (encompasses modules devoted to international standards in the field of nations and human rights, the system of international relations and mechanisms for ensuring people’s rights and the rights of national minorities, the qualification of international crimes against human rights, geopolitical processes in the world, their legality and prediction.
3) The theory of the state (encompasses modules that consider the form of the state, the factors that condition it; the mechanisms of the state, the division of the branches of power, methods and means of their formation; modern legal systems and the constitutional process);
4) Political technologies and propaganda (encompasses modules aimed at studying the forms and methods of political struggle, the organization of lobbying companies, etc.);
5) Socio-economic processes in contemporary conditions (encompasses modules regarding successful economic practices in new states, humanitarian and demographic-migration processes and factors affecting them);
6) Modern technologies in the national liberation struggle (encompassing the subject of cyber protection and personal safety, modern technologies and activity methods of national liberation movements at the current stage).
Each thematic block involves two classes:
1 – theoretical (includes an initial assessment and an interactive lesson);
2 – practical (provides consideration of situational [model] cases based on acquired theoretical knowledge).
Model situations are prepared by the lecturer incorporating the specifics of the course.
Initial and final testing is conducted within the framework of each block.
The approximate time of each lesson – 4 hours;
On concluding the course the participants:
– undergo the final comprehensive testing, which consists of 60 tests (10 tests per block of study). For each thematic block, the lecturer prepares 5 open and 5 closed tests based on the theoretical and practical material, studied during the corresponding thematic block.
– defending the graduation project. Participants are offered a topic within given parameters, according to which they have to prepare a group project. For this activity, students work together in 5 groups of three people. Projects are defended publicly in an online format.
The graduation of the first cohort of UFN students took place in December 2023, which consisted of representatives of the national liberation movements of Buryatia, Karelia, Oirat-Kalmykia, Sakha-Yakutia, Tatarstan and Chechnya. The UFN has received a lot of positive feedback both from the graduates themselves and from national organizations. Currently, the ІІ recruitment of UFN participants is under way.
