NESENENKO proti Ukrajině

FIFTH SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 62359/17
Oleksandr Oleksandrovych NESENENKO
against Ukraine

The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 23 October 2025 as a Committee composed of:

Kateřina Šimáčková, President,
María Elósegui,
Gilberto Felici, judges,
and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 62359/17) against Ukraine lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 15 August 2017 by a Ukrainian national, Mr Oleksandr Oleksandrovych Nesenenko (“the applicant”), who was born in 1982, lives in Gorishni Plavni and was represented by Mr S.M. Shevchenko, a lawyer practising in Kremenchuk in the Poltava Region;

the decision to give notice of the application to the Ukrainian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, most recently Ms M. Sokorenko;

the parties’ observations;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1. The case concerns the applicant’s complaint under Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention that his right to education had been violated by the failure of the authorities to provide him in a timely manner with the flight training required to complete his university studies as a helicopter pilot.

2. In September 2005, having successfully passed the entrance examinations, the applicant gained admission to the Kremenchuk Flight College (“the College”), a State-run higher education institution attached to the State Aviation University (“the SAU”), in order to qualify as a helicopter pilot.

3. According to the information provided by the Ministry of Education and Science in the course of the court proceedings initiated by the applicant (see below), at the end of their four-year higher education courses the College’s students were to receive a diploma as graduates of the SAU and a Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL) in accordance with the Joint Aviation Requirements (JAR). The theoretical part of the studies covered the MI-2 and MI-8 helicopters. The flight training included flights on the AK1-3, MI-2 and MI-8 helicopters. According to his admission documents, the applicant’s studies began on 1 September 2005.

4. During his four years of study, the applicant was provided with theoretical training but did not undergo flight training on account of the institution’s lack of funds.

5. On 30 April 2009, in spite of his lack of the requisite flying practice, the applicant was awarded a helicopter pilot diploma stating that he was the holder of a bachelor’s degree in aircraft operations (експлуатації літальних апаратів). In the appendix to the diploma, the lines “qualification” (спеціалізація), “flying practice” and “professional rights” were left blank.

6. On the same day, the head of the College issued a decision stating that those who had received their diplomas, including the applicant, would remain students until they had completed their flight training – to be provided as soon as the funds were made available – but not beyond a period of five years from the date of their completion of the theoretical courses. In the meantime, the applicant was placed on educational leave.

7. In March 2011 the applicant, who at the time was working as an aircraft engineer in an aircraft factory after having received the relevant training there, was asked to return to the College to start his flight training on AK1-3 and MI‑2 helicopters. In order to undergo the training, he had to leave his job and the accommodation provided by the aircraft factory and to rent an apartment near the College. The training on the AK1-3 helicopter was completed by August 2012, and in May 2013 the applicant accumulated three flight hours (out of the thirty‑five required by the study programme) on the MI-2 helicopter.

8. In July 2013 the applicant was again placed on educational leave as he could not be provided with the required number of flight hours on account of a lack of funds.

9. In February 2015 the applicant lodged a claim with the Avtozavodskiy District Court of Kremenchuk (“the District Court”) against the College, the SAU and the Ministry of Education and Science, requesting, inter alia, that they be ordered to complete his flight training on the MI‑2 within two months in accordance with his study programme, to retrain him on the MI‑8 helicopter by providing fifteen hours of flight training on an MI-8 MTB simulator, and to record the relevant training in his diploma.

10. In the course of the proceedings, the College and the SAU acknowledged that they were obliged to provide the applicant with the flight training in question, but claimed that the State had failed to provide funding for the flight training over the past twenty-three years, while at the same time requiring pilots to be trained. The College submitted that its repeated requests for the necessary funds had been rejected. As a result, the College had attempted to ensure funding for the flight training from its own resources (derived from its commercial activities), but those resources had not always been available or sufficient to ensure the training in a timely manner, as in the case of the applicant.

11. On 25 March 2015 the District Court allowed the claim in part and ordered the SAU to complete the applicant’s training on the MI-2 helicopter and to ensure his retraining on the MI-8 helicopter by providing fifteen hours of training on an MI-8 MTB simulator. That judgment was upheld by higher courts and took effect on 4 May 2016. The courts found, in particular, that for more than nine years the State had been unable to fulfil its obligations and to ensure the applicant’s constitutional right to education. They held that the lack of funds – a problem that should have been resolved between the educational institution and the State – could not justify a violation of the applicant’s right to education and that it had placed an excessive burden on him by obliging him to seek protection of that constitutional right.

12. In 2016, after twice imposing a fine on the SAU for its failure to enforce the judgment in the applicant’s favour, the bailiff’s office closed the enforcement proceedings because it was impossible to enforce the judgment on account of the SAU’s lack of funds. The applicant and the bailiff’s office unsuccessfully attempted to institute criminal proceedings against the managers of the SAU and the College in relation to their failure to enforce the judgment of the District Court.

13. In December 2016 the applicant asked the SAU to provide him with information on the expected timing of his flight training. He also enquired about the duration of his educational leave and the legal basis for it, and whether he was still considered a student of the College. In a reply dated 4 January 2017, the administration of the SAU informed the applicant that it was impossible to provide him with flight training on account of a lack of funds and that he no longer had student status.

14. After receiving the letter of 4 January 2017, the applicant, who had been unemployed since June 2011 when he had been called to undergo the flight training and then placed on educational leave, contacted an employment centre in order to find a new job. In April 2017, after completing the relevant training, he was offered a position as a mill operator in a mine, where he is still employed today.

15. By 21 June 2018 the applicant had completed his flight hours on the MI-2 helicopter, and on 23 June 2018 he was issued with an MI-2 pilot licence.

16. On 25 June 2018, by order of the head of the College, the applicant was discharged (відрахований) from the establishment. The reason given was that he had obtained an MI-2 commercial pilot licence and had thus completed his studies.

17. The College ceased to exist in May 2019. Kharkiv National University of Internal Affairs became its legal successor as regards the provision of studies. In September 2023 the Ministry of the Interior informed the Government that, if need be, it could provide the applicant with flight training on an MI-8 MTB simulator, provided that the SAU paid for the service.

18. The applicant complained that the failure of the authorities to provide him in due time with the compulsory flight training required to complete his studies as a helicopter pilot had been contrary to Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

19. The Government submitted that the applicant was no longer a victim of the alleged violation since he had completed his studies on 25 June 2018 and had obtained his helicopter pilot licence.

20. They further argued that the applicant’s right to complete his flight training had never been denied by the authorities and that the delay had been due to financial constraints in respect of the flight training programme. They maintained that the lack of practical flight training did not invalidate the diploma awarded to the applicant in 2009, which had enabled him to find employment in the aviation sector. Lastly, they pointed out that the applicant had not worked as a pilot after obtaining his licence. On that basis, they asked the Court to reject the application as groundless.

21. The applicant contested those objections. He argued that the prolonged delay in providing flight training had had a lasting negative impact on his daily life and professional development and that he had still not received retraining on the MI-8 helicopter. Given the uncertainty as to the prospects of obtaining the training, he had been forced to retrain and pursue an alternative career.

22. The Court does not consider it necessary to examine the Government’s objections as, even assuming that access to flight training as a compulsory part of a State-run higher education programme falls within the scope of Article 2 of Protocol No. 1, the application is in any event inadmissible for the reasons stated below.

23. The Court notes that, according to the documents before it, the College never disputed that the flight training had been an integral part of the applicant’s studies and that it had been obliged to provide it within the four‑year study period but had been unable to do so because of financial constraints. In its 2015 judgment, as upheld by higher courts, the District Court expressly found that there had been an unjustified interference with the applicant’s constitutional right to education on that ground and ordered that he receive the requisite flight training on the MI-2 helicopter, as provided for in the study programme, and retraining on the MI-8 (see paragraph 11 above). The District Court did not award compensation for the delay, and the applicant did not seek such compensation, either by appealing against the judgment of the District Court or by submitting a separate application on the basis of the judicial decision in his favour.

24. The Court further notes that in 2018, while his application was pending before the Court, the applicant completed the MI-2 training and successfully obtained a helicopter pilot licence. On that basis, his studies were declared complete and he was formally discharged from the College in June 2018 (see paragraph 16 above).

25. In those circumstances, where the authorities acknowledged the violation of the applicant’s right to education and eventually ensured the provision of sufficient flight training to enable him to obtain his pilot licence, the Court considers that a claim for compensation for the delay and its adverse effects would have constituted an appropriate means for the applicant to be provided with full redress. However, there is nothing to suggest that the applicant sought such compensation before the national courts. Nor did he claim before the Court that such a remedy was unavailable under domestic law, ineffective or otherwise inaccessible.

26. As regards the fact that the applicant’s retraining on the MI-8 helicopter remained incomplete, the Court notes that the applicant has not challenged the decision of the College to declare his studies complete and to discharge him despite its failure to provide him with the MI-8 retraining in full. Nor has he pursued the issue of the incomplete MI-8 retraining in any other way at the domestic level. He likewise failed to demonstrate to the Court how the lack of retraining on the MI-8, in the light of the MI-2 training which he had received and the pilot licence which he had obtained, had amounted in itself to a denial of his right to education and had undermined the principal educational objectives of the programme. The Court also finds no basis for interpreting Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 as guaranteeing access to each and every aspect of specialised vocational training.

27. In the light of the foregoing, since the applicant had access to the aviation programme, completed the training (albeit not as originally planned), eventually obtained a pilot’s licence (thereby fulfilling the essential purpose of his studies), and did not seek compensation at the domestic level for the damage suffered as a result of the delay in the provision of educational services, it cannot be said that he was denied access to education.

28. The application is therefore manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Declares the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 20 November 2025.

Martina Keller Kateřina Šimáčková
Deputy Registrar President