The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, signed a law introducing mandatory military training for students of medical specialties under the program of reserve officers of the medical service. Document determines new training rules for future doctors.
According to the law, all students of medical and pharmaceutical specialties who have passed the professional-psychological selection and have a suitable state of health must undergo military training according to the relevant program. For the rest of the citizens of Ukraine who have or are obtaining a higher education at least at the bachelor’s level, training remains voluntary, provided they pass the selection and are medically fit.
The document also gives the Ministry of Health the authority to approve the list of military accounting specialties for which military training of future reserve officers is conducted, as well as to determine the scope of such training for the medical and pharmaceutical profile.
In the explanatory note, it is noted that currently the training of reserve officers of the medical service is carried out only in ten of the fifteen universities under the Ministry of Health. Another nine medical universities work within the structure of the Ministry of Education and Science, but only four of them have military training units.
Until now, such training has been purely voluntary and mostly financed by the students themselves. This limited the number of specialists who could be appointed to military positions in a particular period. Today, only about 5% of medical students are trained under the program of reserve officers, and training at the expense of the state budget is possible only under the condition of signing a contract with the Ministry of Defense.
The adopted law creates a legal basis for the restoration or creation of new departments of military medicine and disaster medicine in universities subordinated to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Health. The law enters into force on the day following its official promulgation, and is put into effect on January 1, 2026.
