Society

A delegation from Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University has returned from the Republic of Ecuador, where they participated for two weeks in the “International Engineering Practice 2026” educational program, conducted in a “summer school” format.

The Russian rating agency RAEX has published the new results of its subject-specific rankings of domestic higher education institutions. In 2026, Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University entered the top 5 across four distinct categories: first place in ”Petroleum Engineering,” third in ”Land Transport Engineering and Technologies,” and fifth in both ”Ecology” and ”Chemical Engineering.”

The third meeting of the Working Group on Education, Science, and Technology of the Joint Russia–Malaysia Commission on Economic, Scientific, Technical, and Cultural Cooperation was held at the National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University. The meeting was opened by Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, Airat Gatiyatov, and Secretary-General of the Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia, Datuk Anesi Bin Ibrahim.

The Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation hosted the sectoral seminar “Russian Engineering School.” According to Minister Sergey Tsivilev, improving the personnel training system is today regarded by representatives of fuel and energy companies as a key priority for the development of the industry.

At Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University, a scientific and practical seminar with international participation titled “Russian as a Foreign Language in Engineering Education: Challenges and Modern Approaches” was held. Representatives of the university’s Center for Language Competencies shared their vision and experience in teaching the “great and mighty” Russian language, alongside colleagues from educational institutions in Russia, China, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Republika Srpska.

A delegation from the Shanghai Jingyuan Senior High School, led by its principal Ji Hongxue, visited Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University. The school is one of Shanghai’s first experimental and model senior high schools, and Mr. Ji is a member of the Council of the Chinese Society of Education as well as an expert supervisor of the National Teacher Training Program. Around 30 students at the school study the Russian language, and the administration is interested in introducing them to opportunities for continuing their education in Russia.

In early April, a delegation from Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University, led by Vice-Rector Evgeniy Lyubin, visited Pyongyang. During the visit, the parties agreed on the conditions for training Korean specialists in Saint Petersburg under the postgraduate program “Modern Techniques and Technologies in Mining and Oil and Gas Engineering”, as well as for several dozen students under basic higher education programs.

The aggression of the United States and Israel against Iran may appear to be a gross geopolitical miscalculation on the part of both Washington and Tel Aviv. However, at the same time, it is far from accidental, as it represents the logical continuation of a series of trends that matured in world politics during the post-Cold War period. These trends emerged from the decision of the U.S. and the West as a whole to preserve and perpetuate their global hegemony as a mode of existence for their civilization.

The Council of the European Union for Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs held a regular meeting to discuss the return of retirees to the labor market. The “silver transformation,” as the trend of population ageing is called in Europe, is draining highly qualified personnel from industry. The inflow of young people is insufficient to compensate for these losses: 77% of companies report that the shortage of qualified personnel is hindering the attraction of long-term investment.

Why do young researchers in China and Russia face fundamentally different challenges? What led the Celestial Empire to technological leadership, and Russia’s first engineering university to top positions in international educational rankings? Which scientific fields interest candidates of sciences in both countries today?