"No such mobility programme is valid": what the NMC said to Indian students who left Ukraine, and why an agent's "transfer to Europe" was never a transfer

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, roughly twenty thousand Indian medical students were enrolled in Ukrainian universities. What happened to their degrees afterwards became a market in itself, and the National Medical Commission spent the following years telling students which offers were real.

According to ThePrint, the NMC's rules for foreign graduates, which require the whole course, internship and registration in the country of the degree, left returning students with few options, and its later clarifications added to the confusion. The Tribune reported the commission's position on "academic mobility", the arrangement under which Ukrainian universities let students continue at partner institutions elsewhere in Europe: the NMC said it did not approve the mobility programmes offered by Ukraine and that no such programme for MBBS was valid. It then, as a one-time measure, allowed students to complete their remaining course at another university abroad with the degree awarded by the university they migrated to, within a window of three months from its notice. Careers360 reported the commission answering students' questions and stating that Ukraine returnees could not be accommodated in Indian medical colleges. The same reporting recorded a fake letter, dated September 2022 and circulated under NMC officials' signatures, claiming that a Kyrgyz university was recognised; the commission said it had issued no such letter.

The mobility offers deserve the attention. Agents sold them as "transfer to Poland, Georgia, Uzbekistan with credits intact", for fees; universities in several countries accepted the students; and the NMC's answer was that a degree earned that way, outside its one-time window, would not be accepted. The students had paid for something real that did not work.

For any student in any country facing disruption: the only body that can tell you whether a transfer will be recognised is your home regulator, in writing, before you move. An agent's "mobility programme", a host university's welcome letter and a Ukrainian university's certificate of credits are all genuine documents, and none of them answers that question.