The Ministry of Education and Science stripped two female scientists of their academic degrees after accusations of plagiarism
This is stated in an order issued by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. The
Attestation Board of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine has decided to revoke the academic degrees of two female scientists accused of academic plagiarism.
These are Doctor of Technical Sciences Yulia Kovalenko and Candidate of Medical Sciences Natalia Voloshinovich.
Yulia Kovalenko works at the Kyiv Aviation University.
In 2013, she defended her thesis and obtained a degree in pedagogical sciences.
In July 2025, Kovalenko defended her doctoral thesis at the State University of Information and Communication Technologies in Kyiv.
According to the decision of the academic council of this institution, she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences.
However, in September 2025, the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance received a complaint about her first dissertation.
The author of the complaint, Oleg Smirnov, a candidate of biological sciences, accused Yulia Kovalenko of academic plagiarism.
In the complaint, he noted that plagiarism was found on 70 pages out of 96 pages of the main text, which is 73%.
According to him, in the rewritten text, Ivanchuk, Yulia Kovalenko's maiden name, changed the words "future doctor" to "future specialist in the field of information security," "medical education" to "higher technical education," and "medical university" to "technical university."
Also, as the applicant claimed, she completely copied tables 3.3, 3.4 and others, and in tables 3.8, 3.9 and 3.10 she falsified the data, changing the numbers so that their sum in the corresponding columns or rows exceeds or is less than 100%.
In February 2026, the attestation board had already refused to award Kovalenko a doctorate.
At that time, they explained that a doctoral dissertation must contain scientific propositions and results obtained by the author personally, as well as comply with the principles of academic integrity.
The attestation board made a separate decision regarding Natalia Voloshynovych.
She worked as an assistant at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Bukovinian State Medical University and held a degree in medical sciences.
Her diploma was declared invalid due to the presence of textual borrowings in the dissertation without reference to the source.
A complaint against Voloshynovich's doctoral dissertation entitled "Optimisation of assisted reproductive technology tactics in patients with uterine polyps" was also filed in October 2024 by Oleg Smirnov, a candidate of biological sciences.
In his appeal to the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance, he noted that 74% of her dissertation, which is a total of 81 pages of text, is plagiarised.
In addition, the complaint accused Natalia Voloshinovich of not having any articles in which, according to her, the results of the study were presented.
It also mentioned the similarity of the text and tables in her dissertation to those contained in the research of another scientist, Lyudmila Ivakhova.
The complaint also noted that the academic supervisor of both Nataliia Voloshynovych and Liudmyla Ivakhova was the same person: Oleksandr Mykhailovych Yuzko, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Bukovinian State Medical University.
Oleg Smirnov claimed that as of 29 October 2024, six people had already been found to have plagiarised dissertations, whose scientific supervisor was Oleksandr Yuzko.
Against this backdrop, the article reminds readers that the Verkhovna Rada has passed Bill No. 10392.
It introduces uniform rules for academic integrity in education and science, liability for violations, and mechanisms for responding to such cases.
