HSE Student Takes First Place in Yandex University Battle
On June 25, 2025, the final round of the University Battle took place, with 54 HSE students participating. The individual programming tournament for students, school pupils, and graduates was organised by Yandex as part of the Young Con festival dedicated to IT careers.
The competition consisted of three stages: two qualifying rounds and a final in-person event in Moscow. Participants were challenged to quickly solve algorithmic programming problems in a battle-like format. Two competitors faced off, with the winner being the one who completed a relatively simple task the fastest.
Out of 200 participants invited to the final, HSE was represented by 54 students—the largest number from any single university.
Following all rounds, the overall winner was Viktor Krivoshchyokov, a second-year student of the Applied Mathematics and Information Science programme at the HSE Faculty of Computer Science. In the final round, he faced off against Arseny Varaksin, a student of the same programme.
Prizes were awarded to the top 30 finalists, 15 of whom were HSE students.
Viktor Krivoshchyokov
‘I am glad I won—this was my first time winning an event of this scale,’ said Viktor Krivoshchyokov. ‘I did not prepare specifically for the qualifiers or the final. Before the competition, I practised solving problems and trained myself to write code as quickly as possible. The strongest opponent I faced was Vsevolod Lepeshov. He took off ahead of me in the first task, but I managed to catch up. In the second task, we both misunderstood the question at first, but I was lucky to figure it out slightly earlier. Each round of three tasks lasted five minutes, and the format demanded fast thinking and short, correct solutions. The final was great—I saw lots of familiar faces, and the atmosphere was amazing. A huge thanks to the organisers for the high level of the event. I would be happy to take part in the next University Battle and I am planning to try my hand at other Yandex contests too.’
Sergey Berezhnoy
‘When coming up with a new format for programming competitions, we wanted to capture the excitement and thrill that drew many of us to the profession,’ said Sergey Berezhnoy, Director of Developer Relations at Yandex. ‘To do that, we had to make it as accessible as possible, both for participants and spectators. Most of the battle problems can be understood and solved by any practising programmer… but doing it quickly, head-to-head—that is where real skill comes in!’
‘Unlike traditional programming competitions that last several hours, the battle is fast-paced and engaging. It doesn’t require any knowledge of complex algorithms or data structures,’ noted Mikhail Gustokashin, Director of the Centre of Student Competitions at the HSE Faculty of Computer Science. ‘Even someone who has just started learning programming can take part in a battle—you can test out this format on the CodeBattle platform. However, even experienced competitive programmers need specific training for battle-style contests, so now is the perfect time to start preparing for the next University Battle.’