The MFA apostille: certificates outside every other authority

Short answer: after the redistribution of powers that took effect on 1 January 2023, the MFA apostilles whatever is not assigned to any other authority. That is not a residue of trivia but a concrete set of documents people take abroad every day: medical certificates, Pension Fund documents, certificates from state institutions outside the justice and education spheres. It is also the slowest of the apostille routes — below is why.

What happened in 2023

The MFA used to be the default authority for everything that did not go to the Ministry of Justice or MON. Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 631 of 27 May 2022 amended Resolution No. 61 of 18 January 2003, and from 1 January 2023 part of those documents moved to the bodies that issue them:

Authority	What it apostilles
Ministry of Justice	civil-registry, notarial and court documents; state archives; penitentiary and probation service
MON	education and science: diplomas, school certificates, supplements, academic transcripts
Ministry of Internal Affairs	documents issued by the MIA and its service-provision bodies (including the criminal-record extract)
State Migration Service	documents in the field of migration
State Tax Service	documents issued by the tax service
MFA	all other official documents

That last row is the essence of this route. The MFA has no document list of its own, because its competence is described as a remainder — and that is precisely why the web is full of contradictory instructions: pages written before 2023 still send people to the MFA for a criminal-record extract that it no longer even examines.

The second practical half of the change: the MFA returns without examination documents whose certification belongs to another body. That is not a refusal with a refund and not advice — it is simply lost time. Two minutes spent checking the route before filing is the cheapest step in the process.

Which documents actually go to the MFA

• Medical certificates — forms 086-o and 082-o, discharge summaries, fitness certificates, vaccination records, where the receiving institution specifically asks for an apostille. One nuance: specialist pages describe medical certificates as frequently needing certification by the regional (city) health department before the MFA — without that step a doctor’s signature has nothing backing it. Whether it applies to you depends on who issued the certificate, so ask both the department and the MFA.
• Pension Fund documents — certificates of pension amount, of insurance record, of entitlement to payments. Foreign pension funds and banks both ask for them; what to collect to prove service and payments is set out in pension documents abroad.
• Certificates from other state institutions that fall outside the justice, education, internal-affairs, migration and tax spheres.

And separately, the most common misunderstanding: the income certificate. If a state body issued it, the route leads to the Ministry of Justice; if it is a letter from a private employer, it is not an official document at all and an apostille is only possible through a notarial act. On top of that, visa applications rarely require an apostille on an income certificate — a certified translation is usually enough. We set out the requirements on the income statement translation page.

Why this is the slowest route

The three ministries verify authenticity in three different ways, and that is what sets the timeline:

Authority	How the signature and seal are verified	Effect on the timeline
Ministry of Justice	Electronic Register of Apostilles with specimen signatures (since 2026)	decision in 3 working days, suspension possible
MON	register of education documents (EDEBO), or an enquiry to the institution if there is no entry	fast, or 20–30 working days
MFA	in many cases an enquiry to the institution that issued the document	the institution’s reply sets the pace

Two practical conclusions follow. First: the fresher the certificate and the larger the institution that issued it, the faster the apostille. Second: if your package contains documents from several authorities — a birth certificate, a diploma and a medical certificate, say — do not queue them one after another. File in parallel, because the longest link will set the completion date for the whole package anyway.

Do you even need an apostille? Check before paying

On this route an apostille is asked for noticeably less often than on certificates and diplomas — and this is where most of the wasted money goes. Three typical situations:

• A foreign clinic almost always wants a professional translation of the discharge summary or medical history rather than a stamp: the doctor needs the diagnosis, the drugs and the doses, not confirmation of a seal. An apostille is usually required when the document goes to a state body instead — for example, to establish entitlement to a payment.
• An insurer asks for an apostille more often, because for them the document is evidence in a claim. The phrase “certified / legalised medical report” in an insurer’s letter can mean either an apostille or ordinary certification of a translation — worth clarifying in writing.
• A foreign pension fund generally does require an apostille on service and payment certificates, because it treats them as official documents of another state.

The rule that works: get the institution’s requirement in writing, then pay the charges. If the answer does not contain the word “apostille”, a notarised translation is probably enough — a different timeline and a different price.

If you are already abroad, the apostille is still affixed in Ukraine: a representative under a power of attorney obtains and files the certificate, or the document is sent to Ukraine and the finished package comes back electronically or by post. You cannot arrange it at a consulate yourself — a consulate can only forward documents to the competent authority.

Translation: after the apostille, and including it

An apostille adds text to the document, and that text is translated too. The order does not change: stamp first, then translation of the whole document including the apostille, then certification in whatever form the institution wants — agency stamp (UAH 100), notarisation (UAH 400) or certified translation for the USA, Canada and the UK (UAH 200).

Medical documents carry one further consideration that has nothing to do with apostilles: terminology, because the diagnosis, the drugs and the doses are read by a doctor rather than an official. How we handle that, and what to prepare for a clinic, is in medical records translation for treatment abroad; for the school and visa form 086 there is a separate guide, medical certificate 086.

The MFA’s second role: consular legalisation

Two different functions of the same ministry should not be conflated. An apostille applies when the destination country is a Hague Convention party. When it is not (the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt), the MFA appears not as an apostille authority but as one link in the legalisation chain: notary → Ministry of Justice or MON → MFA → the destination country’s consulate. We set out the full route, charges and timelines in consular legalisation of documents.

What is never apostilled

• Passports and internal ID documents. When an institution asks for a “legalised passport”, what it needs in practice is a notarised translation.
• Driving licences. The authorities that exchange licences want a certified translation of the card, not a legalised original.
• Documents issued by another state. The issuing country certifies those.
• Documents of private individuals and companies — without a notarial act they are not official documents.

Typical mistakes

• Taking a criminal-record extract to the MFA. Since 2023 that is the Ministry of Internal Affairs; the document comes back unexamined.
• Ordering a certificate six months “in advance”. Medical and Pension Fund certificates often have a limited acceptance window at the receiving institution, and an apostille does not extend it.
• Translating before the apostille. You will pay for the translation twice, the second time with the stamp.
• Skipping the intermediate certification. For some medical certificates the MFA expects a document already certified by the health department; without it there is nothing to check the doctor’s signature against.
• Trusting an undated page. Texts from 2020–2022 still describe the old allocation of powers. If a page carries no date, do not plan around it.

If you need help

We handle the translation and certification against the institution’s requirement, and we flag the right route before you pay a charge to the wrong ministry. Send a scan and tell us where the document is going and who will read it — we will say which authority affixes the apostille, whether it is needed at all, and how long the whole package realistically takes: a quote within 15 minutes.

Ready-made services on this route: medical certificate translation, income statement translation and the general legalisation and apostille services page, where timelines are grouped by document type.