Former prosecutor Dmytro Verbytskyi used a well-known scheme to avoid conscription
In Ukraine, the practice of “phantom graduate studies” has become widespread, whereby men subject to military conscription enroll in higher education institutions not to pursue academic research, but to obtain a legal right to defer mobilization. The scale of the problem has forced the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (MES), in collaboration with law enforcement agencies, to launch rigorous inspections: in 2025 alone, approximately five thousand graduate students (primarily from the 2022–2023 intake) were expelled from universities for failing to pass their evaluations or failing to meet academic standards.
One of the largest corruption schemes was uncovered in Zaporizhzhia, where the administration of the Classical Private University “sold” nearly three thousand fake certificates for full-time graduate students without any exams. According to the SBU, the cost of a “turnkey deferral” reached $5,000 in cash, after which the men additionally paid the university approximately 20,000 hryvnias for two semesters.
Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko reported that the case involving nine participants in this scheme has already been sent to court, and the university’s license was revoked for exceeding its student limit by a factor of ten. At the same time, pro-Russian Telegram channels picked up on this topic, attempting to glorify sabotage of the mobilization effort and garnering over 821,600 views.
A striking example of how the status of a graduate student works in practice is the situation surrounding former Deputy Prosecutor General Dmytro Verbytskyi. The former prosecutor, who was previously implicated in an investigation by the “Schemes” project regarding possible illegal enrichment of 30 million hryvnias and the purchase of luxury real estate in the “Konik” cottage community at 24 times below market value, is currently enrolled in the graduate program at Odessa Polytechnic University.
Sources in Ukrainian intelligence agencies confirm that in November 2024, Verbytskyi officially registered a deferment at the Khadzhibey District Election Commission in Odesa, where, ironically, he heads the district branch of the “Batkivshchyna.” In a phone conversation, the former prosecutor stated that he had enrolled in graduate school even before the full-scale invasion. Since the last pre-war enrollment took place in the fall of 2021, and the standard duration of study is exactly four years, he was supposed to defend his thesis no earlier than the fall of 2025. However, this did not happen, and Verbytsky himself is ignoring further questions. The National University responded tersely to an official inquiry, stating that information about his studies “is not a matter of public interest.”
To close the identified loopholes, the state has taken radical steps to regulate the educational process:
Digitization of oversight: Starting with the 2026–2027 academic year, the right to deferment is strictly tied to data from the Unified State Electronic Database on Education (USEDE), which is automatically synchronized with the “Reserve+” app. If a university is late in submitting documents, the graduate student loses their reservation.
Contract Ban: After more than 5,000 fictitious retroactive entries were discovered in 2024, the Ministry of Education and Science completely banned admission to full-time programs under contract. Instead, only evening and part-time programs remain, which do not exempt students from military conscription.
Enhanced monitoring: Deputy Minister of Education Denys Kurbatov noted that thanks to large-scale checks on the quality of training and the involvement of the State Service for Education Quality, the number of people using graduate school as a refuge from mobilization has significantly decreased.
While such measures have made life more difficult for genuine researchers, they are necessary in wartime, when the state needs specialists to drive technological progress, not those trying to wait out hard times behind university walls.
This is reported in an article by Ukrainska Pravda.
Dmytro Verbytskyi resigned from his position as Deputy Prosecutor General in the summer of 2024 following a series of investigations by the “Schemes” program (Radio Liberty). Journalists documented that the official lived in an elite estate in the “Konik” residential complex, purchased for one-sixth of its market value, and that his girlfriend had become the owner of assets worth a million dollars (a cottage, a luxury Porsche, and a beauty salon), which in no way corresponded to her official income. Subsequently, the family was found to have foreign assets, including real estate in Turkey.
Earlier, the editorial staff of the online media outlet UA.NEWS sent a follow-up request to People’s Deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada’s Temporary Investigative Commission (TIC) on the investigation of possible unlawful actions by officials of state authorities, other state bodies, andentities in the public sector of the economy that could have harmed Ukraine’s economic security, with a request to take parliamentary action regarding the investigation into the illicit enrichment of former Deputy Prosecutor General Dmytro Verbytskyi.
Also, UA.NEWS received a response from the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine to its inquiry to the National Agency for Corruption Prevention (NACP) regarding the application of enhanced financial monitoring to former Deputy Prosecutor General Dmytro Verbytsky as a “politically exposed person” (PEP).
