Verification: Ukrainian Qualifications

Please note: this guidance document is regularly updated with our tips and tricks.  Please feel free to contribute or report any issues to [email protected] 

• In early 2023, the Ukrainian Shipping Administration made some major changes to the way they issue seafarer qualifications. This has had a knock on effect, meaning you'll have to verify some certificates differently to others
• Seafarers could exchange qualifications issued prior to Feb 2023 for new certificates

• Officers need to hold a Diploma (COC) which doesn't expire, and also an Endorsement to the COC (which expires after 5 years).  There are some examples below

• National Training Institutions across Ukraine are approved to issue STCW modular certificates
• The best verification experiences we’ve had so far are for STCW modular issued since February 2023 and COCs as these can normally be done via the MARAD portal
• Some of the National Training Institutions (NTZ) have their own portals (for example IMTC and Admiral) but we have had mixed results...

Certs issued since Feb 2023 seem to be verifiable instantly via

vrf.marad.gov.ua/check-document

What info needs to be input? 

• Document type: choose "NTZ certificate"
• Document number: copy and paste from the extracted data stored in Crewdentials
• Name of the NTZ: choose from the list
• Document name: This isn't the easiest to navigate as the list that appears is a combination of Ukrainian terms, and English translations that don't always relate to the commonly used STCW terms.  The list of options that appears will depend on the date you input for the date of issue: 
• pre 27.02.2023 has the STCW codes so can be easier to find what you are looking for
• post 27.02.2023 tends to have more English translations, but not always obvious which one to choose

Tip: The copy of the certificate should have both a Ukrainian and English translation but again, these don't always translate to the commonly used STCW terms. 

We’ve put together a list of the most common in this separate guide

Top tips: 

• Certs issued before Feb 2023 will need to be verified by MARAD manually
• You typically get a response within 24 hours, but they are sometimes unable to verify as they don't hold the information.  In that case they will direct you to the issuer 

To request a verification via MARAD, follow this procedure: 

• Register for an account at https://vrf.marad.gov.ua/login
• Log in 
• For STCW Modular, choose NTZ Certificate
• Click "Make Request" 

You'll then be taken to a page titled "Confirmation of seafarer qualifications" where you have to re-input the info

• Document types: choose Certificate of NTZ
• Document number: copy and paste the extracted data stored in Crewdentials
• Name of the NTZ: choose from the list
• Document name: Again, this isn't the easiest to navigate as the list that appears is a combination of Ukrainian terms, and English translations that don't always relate to the commonly used STCW terms. 
• There seem to be 5 boxes for names, what we have done which seems to work is put the seafarer’s name in Ukrainian into the “Name/name/middle name” box and then the “Name (in English) and Last Name (in English)" boxes.  The Ukrainian name needs to be in cyrillic.  If you don't have this available, you can take a screen shot of their name on the Ukrainian version of the certificate upload to Google or Chat GPT (subject to your data protection policies) with the following prompt "convert this image to text"

• Click "Make a request".  You'll get an automated email and also be taken to your personal dashboard where you can see the history of your verifications and the results

Top tips: 

• all boxes need to be complete, otherwise you go back to the start (spoken from painful experience!)
• Once submitted - don’t press the icon of a circle with a diagonal line through - this will cancel the request (again, spoken from painful experience)
• you'll need a pdf/png of the certificate (you can get this from Crewdentials)

We will update this section based on our experiences.... 

"Diploma" = CoC

"Confirmation of Diploma" = Endorsement

The process for verifying is similar to that described for STCW Modular above but choose Diploma or Confirmation of Diploma as applicable