Vasyl' Stus Donetsk National University (Vasyl Stus DonNU) (Ukrainian: Донецький національний університет імені Василя Стуса, romanized: Donetskyi natsionalnyi universytet imeni Vasylia Stusa; Russian: Донецкий государственный университет, romanized: Donetskiy gosudarstvennyy universitet) is one of the leading higher educational institutions of Ukraine.

[3] On July 15, 1937, a decree from the Ukrainian SSR established the Stalin State Pedagogical Institute in the city of Stalino (Donetsk).

Its first director was Oleksandr Yevdokymenko, who was arrested in 1938 and sentenced to ten years imprisonment during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

Due to Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II, in 1941 the institute was evacuated first to Kungur and soon thereafter to Molotov, where it was liquidated.

[6] Vasyl' Stus Donetsk National University unites educational and research centers forming a complex that includes: 6 Faculties; 2 regional Training and Retraining Centers; Department of International Education, the UNESCO Department for Ecology in the Technogenous Region; Business Centre; Youth Centre for Legal Studies; the Laboratory for International Scientific and Technical Cooperation; Consulting Centres of the British, German and French Councils; Postgraduate Courses and Doctoral Studies etc.