Studying for a business degree is never easy, but Julia Pavlenko has had to cope with more stress than most students. Her work, classroom commitments and personal life have all been radically disrupted over the past few months in Ukraine.

“I’m working from 6am-2am every day with only a few hours’ sleep, and resting only on Saturdays for two or three hours,” she says. “Our class tries to meet online, but we have to shelter underground during rocket attacks up to three times a day and we often have power cuts.”

Pavlenko is one of a group of Ukrainian managers who signed up for an executive MBA programme in 2020 at Kyiv’s International Management Institute. Since February the group has had to cope with both military bombardments and turbulence in their jobs, well beyond the issues that most university courses were designed to address.