Russian medical universities have announced additional residency enrollment after a mass shortfall of applicants, with hundreds of budget-funded places still unfilled as of August 10. According to the Ordinatura.org portal, the deficit amounts to hundreds of students, and universities have extended admissions until the end of August.
At Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University (RNIMU), 289 budget places remained vacant; at Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, 198; and at the Burnazyan Federal Medical Biophysical Center, 123. Hundreds more places are unfilled at medical universities in St. Petersburg, Tomsk, Rostov-on-Don, Novosibirsk, Omsk, and Luhansk.
Vladislav Ledovsky, founder of Ordinatura.org, attributes the main cause to a law adopted last year that mandates obligatory work assignments for students enrolled under targeted contracts and imposes triple fines for contract termination. The law takes effect on March 1, 2026.
Medical lawyer Alexei Panov also links the shortfall to artificially inflated passing scores. According to him, targeted applicants automatically receive 200 points added to their rating, those who completed an internship as a nurse get an additional 150, while those who graduated with honors receive only 55. This has spawned a shadow market: in messengers, co-authorship in RSCI articles and fake volunteer hours are sold.
Panov notes that competitions most often fail in emergency specialties — anesthesiology and resuscitation, emergency medicine, and oncology. The reason is a “unprecedented” rise in criminal cases against doctors. “There are no fools willing to enter a profession where any systemic error or shortage of medications in a clinic can result in a real prison sentence,” the lawyer wrote.
The situation is uneven: for commercially promising specialties such as dermatovenerology, ophthalmology, or urology, which carry almost no risk of criminal consequences, competition can be very high.