This article considers how higher education in Russia was influenced by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The article stems from an understanding of the institutional independence of universities as the main condition for the quality of higher education. In turn, this quality results in international mobility available for students as a source of the universities' future institutional renewal. Consequently, the full-scale war causing the subsequent international isolation of Russia, inner repressions against civil society, and transformations in social and economic spheres, leads to systemic degradation of higher education in this country. This article shows that this systemic degradation consists in the fact that different consequences of the war in the field of higher education (such as forced emigration of scholars and ideologically motivated quotas for entering universities) mutually increase the international isolation of Russian students.