On May 13, 2021, KSMA was visited by delegation of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania headed by the Speaker of the Seimas Ms. Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, who was on an official visit to Kherson region. In particular, the delegation visited the checkpoints “Chongar” and “Kalanchak”, where they got acquainted with customs and border control procedure on the border with the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The Republic of Lithuania has always been on the side of defending Ukraine’s national interests on international platforms.

During the meeting, Ms. Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, Deputy Chairman of the Group for Inter-Parliamentary Relations with Ukraine Jonas Jarutis, Members of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania: Chairman of the National Security and Defense Committee, Head of the Group for Inter-Parliamentary Relations with Ukraine Laurynas Kasčiūnas and Deputy Chairman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis, Rector of KSMA Vasyl ‪Cherniavskyi spoke about the state of implementation of scientific cooperation with higher education institutions of Lithuania, which already has a small but powerful history.

Kherson State Maritime Academy has quite close ties with Lithuanian educational institutions: cooperation began in 2017, with the signing of an agreement with Lithuanian Maritime Academy, at which 16 teachers of KSMA were on internship. At the same time, there are permanent joint events: conferences, preparation of scientific research, Marathon “Digitalization of Maritime Education”, within the framework of All Digital Week, etc. Cooperation between maritime educational institutions is intensively developing and has significant results.

In 2019, Rector of Klaipeda University Arturas Razbadauskas visited KSMA. During his visit a cooperation agreement was signed and since then two joint projects have been elaborated to develop tools for digitalization of education.  

In 2020, during the 7th Baltic-Black Sea Forum, which took place on the basis of KSMA, a cooperation agreement was signed between KSMA and Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius. Thanks to the signing of the agreement, the teachers of KSMA and Vilnius University developed a research project on the gamification of educational process. On May 5, 2021, Eleonora Miglė Černikovaitė, a professor at Vilnius University, gave a lecture for KSMA teachers on the introduction of gamification tools and augmented reality in educational process of higher education. 

In particular, it was noted the important role played jointly by Kherson and Lithuanian Maritime Academies in strengthening and developing the Baltic-Black Sea-Caspian partnership. Thus, the Speaker of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen and members of the delegation praised the importance of joint events held by Kherson State Maritime Academy with its Lithuanian colleagues from Lithuanian Maritime Academy. It was stressed the importance of developing a positive partnership experience, similar to the seminar held last week by colleagues from the maritime academies of Kherson and Klaipeda together with the management of the modern Kazakh seaport of Kuryk.

We believe that the visit of the Speaker and the delegation of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania is a good sign for the development of friendly relations and scientific cooperation of Academy with Lithuanian colleagues and partners.