Final year medical students, pursuing MBBS at Ukrainian universities, can get their degrees without writing the final examination in the war-torn nation which faces the Russian invasion. 

Even students who fled home are glad they do not have to fly back to take their mandatory licensing exams. The KROK is the official licensing exam conducted by the state to award the position of a pharmacist or a doctor. Students who pursue ‘medicine’, ‘pharmacy’, and ‘dentistry’ in Ukraine have to clear two exams. The KROK-1 is taken in the third year while KROK-2 is taken in the sixth year to qualify as a doctor according to Ukrainian standards. 

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The Ukrainian government portal has uploaded a notification informing that KROK-1 has been put off till next year while KROK-2 has been cancelled. 

Suddhajyoti Singha, a final-year student of Dnepropetrovsk State Medical University said “It’s a major relief. The news that we will still get our degrees and licence without appearing for KROK 2 is the best news we have received in some time”, Times of India reports. 

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Another student, Bornik Adhikari, told TOI “If the compulsory KROK 2 examination were to be held in September this year, we would have had to fly to Ukraine to write the paper and would have been adjudged qualified doctors only after passing the exam. I would have loved to write the paper offline but such are the circumstances that it is almost impossible now”. 

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Notably, several Indians go to Ukraine to pursue MBBS. Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, an Indian student from Karnataka also lost his life due to shelling. The aspiring doctor’s remains have been sent home and his father announced Naveen Shekharappa’s body would be donated for medical research, so his dreams would live on in some form. Naveen’s death also shone a light on India’s tough MBBS exam, which forces many students to go abroad.