Despite the diversity of socio-political and economic contexts, educational transformations in post-socialist states have some common trends: orientation towards the 'West' and denial of the socialist past; marketisation of higher education through the introduction and extension of paid services, as well as promotion of competition for public funding; economisation of higher education via adjustment to the amount of economic resources and labour market demand. In this article, I analyse how those trends have been reflected in political practices and public discourses in the case of Ukrainian higher education reforms since the 'Euromaidan' events in 2013-2014. The research shows that, in the Ukrainian case, concepts of orientation towards the 'West', marketisation and economisation of higher education are the key elements of local opinion makers' political rhetoric that play a crucial role in the process of legitimisation of neoliberal reforms in higher education.