The 21-year-old blue-eyed blonde beauty, who is pursuing an engineering degree, was crowned Miss World 2008 in an extravagant African-themed pageant held in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The top five finalists also included Miss India, Parvathy Omanakuttan, Miss Trinidad and Tobago, Gabrielle Walcott, Miss Angola, Brigith dos Santos, and Miss South Africa, Tansey Coetzee.

Tutors at the university in northwest Siberia where the new Miss World studies praised her academic record on Monday, happily complaining that the news of her victory almost disrupted classes.

Sukhinova is a fifth-year student studying cybernetic systems in the Oil and Gas University in Tyumen, a center of the region’s oil and gas industry located over 2,000 kilometers from Moscow. She is one of only five women in the 27-student group.