This article comes a year after VAP began the process of cleansing and is a kind of summary of the work we have done.

In early 2025, former VAP Executive Director Volodymyr Vedmid resigned. This event was preceded by an unpleasant but frank conversation between members of our NGO and him and his partner, Igor Ishchuk, at the 8th scientific and practical conference dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the VAP (Kyiv, November 29-30, 2024).

Group photo of participants at the 8th conference of the NGO VAP, November 29-30, 2024

The dissatisfaction with the actions of Volodymyr Vedmid and Ihor Ishchuk was based on:

– discrediting polygraphology by conducting polygraph tests in their office with the recording of physiological reactions for 5-8 seconds instead of the minimum 15 seconds required by all official methods. This was discovered when reviewing the polygraphs of their employees;

– the profanation of polygraph examinations in their office by conducting them in an inadequately short time, namely, about 40 minutes, including the pre-test interview. In order to mask the pseudo-tests, they simply did not indicate the time of the study in the conclusion (incidentally, neither they nor their students indicate it even now);

– blatantly arrogant conduct of their “5-8-second” retests by specialists who conducted full-fledged studies in accordance with official methodology, and writing conclusions based on these “repeat studies” with opposite results: a citizen who was involved became uninvolved;

– charging money for helping a member of the VAP find a job: if the person didn’t have money, they took their car “by power of attorney”;

– the correspondence (distance) learning they put on stream, which resulted in a massive influx of people into polygraphology who didn’t have basic knowledge of the profession.

In response to collective complaints, VAP members heard the following from Volodymyr Vedmid: “As long as there is no law on polygraphs, it is up to each specialist to record as many reactions as they want” and “we were not the first to start distance learning.” Igor Ishchuk was more eloquent, trying to talk about his family, some kind of car accident, etc., but in the end, he answered direct specific questions by saying that “he and his partner, Volodymyr Vedmid, support the VAP, so all VAP members should be grateful to them.”

The polygraphologists of the VAP proved to be ungrateful (in Igor Ishchuk’s opinion) and voted to remove him from his position as head of the VAP representative office in Kyiv. From that moment on, it was only a matter of time before Volodymyr Vedmid resigned, as the VAP NGO was no longer needed for his and Igor Ishchuk’s business. LINK

Volodymyr Vedmid did not leave the VAP empty-handed — he took the VAP website, mailing address, and Facebook page with him. The “dvizhok” (as he put it in the VAP chat at the time), which had been promoted for nine years, was desperately needed in the new business. The VAP website, email address, and Facebook page were simply attached to NAPU. The situation was taken to absurd lengths. For example, VAP’s thank-you messages remained in Google reviews, but a NAPU sign appeared above them. A group photo from a VAP conference became a “group photo of NAPU members”…

The “trick” worked: thanks to the promoted platform, the organization, which was founded by Volodymyr Vedmid and Ihor Ishchuk in July 2016, but about which nothing was heard until January 2025, took the place of VAP on the first page of Google.

The transition to NAPU was accompanied by a barrage of mudslinging from Volodymyr Vedmid against the VAP and its president, Doctor of Psychology Tetiana Morozova, accusing her of “genocide against Ukrainian polygraph examiners.”

Of the two possible courses of action, the VAP chose not to waste energy and resources on recovering what had been stolen, but to move forward. The turning point was the obligation to pay annual membership fees, which had been stipulated in the VAP’s charter from the outset. The first president of the VAP, Oleksiy Dubrovsky, issued an order back in 2015, according to which the amount was to be 1,500 hryvnia. Ten years later, in 2025, we set annual membership fees at 1,200 hryvnia (100 hryvnia per month). Vladimir Vedmid did not expect this — he hoped to continue speculating on the alleged illegitimacy of VAP President Tetiana Morozova, who was elected in 2018 for a four-year term until the fall of 2022 and could not be re-elected due to the full-scale war. Why couldn’t they? Because, according to the Charter, the election of the VAP president had to take place exclusively at a congress, provided that more than half of the members of the public organization were physically present. Our list included more than 700 people, which meant that at least 360 people would have to attend, which was unrealistic. The maximum number of people who attended the VAP conference was 140, and not all of them were members of our NGO.

The requirement to pay membership fees immediately cleared the list of VAP members by approximately 50%. And it’s not even about the “thriftiness” of some of our former colleagues. As it turned out, at least half of those who had not paid their annual membership fees by March 15, 2025, had long since lost touch with the organization, left the profession, or had only been connected to us by their one-time participation in a conference, where they had once filled out an application to join the VAP. The phone numbers they provided on their membership applications often belonged to other people, and they did not respond to emails sent to them.

Bringing the number of VAP members to the actual figure of over 300 allowed us to hold a VAP congress on April 26, 2025, in which 170 members of our NGO participated. The congress elected a president, vice president, chairs of the scientific and methodological and judicial and expert councils, an executive director, members of the VAP board, and an audit commission. In addition, changes were made to the VAP charter.

In less than six months, the new VAP website ranked on the first page of Google, and our new Facebook page became recognizable.

The VAP has an official account to which members’ contributions are paid and from which we cover expenses related to the activities of the NGO.

We co-organized a panel discussion entitled “Current experience in the use of polygraphs in the field of national security and defense of Ukraine in conditions of military threats” at the prestigious IX Kharkiv International Legal Forum.

On November 21-22, we held the 9th scientific and practical conference of the VAP “Current Issues in Modern Polygraphology,” which resulted in the publication of a collection of scientific papers for the first time in the organization’s history.

Group photo of participants at the 9th conference of the VAP NGO, November 21-22, 2025

We signed memoranda of partnership and cooperation with the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law Academy and the Dnipro State University of Internal Affairs.

For the 11th year, cooperation between the VAP and the I.I. Mechnikov National University has continued in the field of training polygraph examiners. In particular, in 2025, we trained four groups of polygraph examiners. In 2025, we began to provide advanced training for practicing polygraph examiners under the university’s educational program.

We did not complain, we took action. And even in the difficult year of 2025, we fulfilled all our obligations – in particular, we took an active part in the working group on the development of the professional standard “Polygraph Examiner,” which came into force on January 6, 2026.

We are working on the development of Ukrainian polygraphology and clearly see our positive prospects. Unfortunately, we are forced to devote part of our time to countering the owners of the virtual NGO NAPU, Volodymyr Vedmid and Ihor Ishchuk. We will explain why NAPU is virtual in Part 2.