The International Youth Festival was the main topic of discussion during a meeting on April 21 between Ilya Obabkov, Rector of Ural Federal University, and Eduardo Villegas Megías, Mexico’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Russia, who visited UrFU.
“I invite your students and you personally to visit Yekaterinburg in September,” Obabkov said. “I am particularly pleased that, thanks to our joint efforts, the number of UrFU students from Mexico has doubled over the past year. I am confident that our knowledge, experience, and technologies will be of interest to your students. And it is worth noting another crucial aspect—our students’ study of Spanish as one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.”
The diplomat, who visited UrFU for the first time a year ago, thanked the rector for the opportunity to give a lecture on Mexican culture to the university’s students.
During his conversation with 60 Spanish-speaking UrFU students, the ambassador noted that he would like to see Spanish spoken alongside Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and Kazakh at the upcoming festival in Yekaterinburg this September.
“About 100 people from Mexico came to the World Youth Festival in Sochi two years ago; I hope that this September, Yekaterinburg will welcome the same number of guests, or perhaps even more. It’s wonderful that young people from Mexico will come and learn more about your country; this is important for both Russia and Mexico, because when people from different countries learn more about each other, they become better,” emphasized Eduardo Villegas Megías.
Background
There are currently 16 Mexican students studying at UrFU; the university maintains academic ties with the University of Puebla and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and is also developing exchange programs with the University of Madero.
Dmitry Benemansky
In 2026, the project’s stated goal is to provide informational and methodological support for Russian language courses, which entails deepening ties with the University of South Africa and expanding the number of participants involved in the project’s activities.
MISIS University has signed a cooperation agreement with the Indian Institute of Information Technology Dharwad (IIIT Dharwad). The primary focus of the partnership will be the development of student exchange programs in UX/UI design, based at the Department of Computer-Aided Design and Engineering at MISIS and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIIT Dharwad.
On April 13, 2026, at the SFU Institute of Gastronomy, Maxim Rumyantsev, Acting Rector of SFU, and Lan Minglu, Professor and Dean of the Sichuan Cuisine Craft Production Academy, symbolically exchanged Memoranda of Understanding. The document formalizes a partnership in the field of hospitality and opens up new educational opportunities.
More than 500 people from 33 regions of Russia, including the new territories, and 10 countries near and far abroad participated in the event: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Germany, the United States, Bangladesh, India, Ethiopia, and Namibia. More than 150 speakers presented papers on the challenges of inclusion as a social phenomenon in the professional sphere.
The event aimed to identify new channels for attracting students, enter unexplored international markets, and establish a presence there to increase interest in studying at NSU and other Russian universities.
