Reviewed by Carlos Vargas, Texas Licensed Funeral Director (TFSC #119648) ·
Houston publishes Texas by name
Most of these guides open by admitting that no consulate says which American state it covers. Ukraine is the exception. The Consulate General of Ukraine in Houston publishes its district and Texas is on it by name, with Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oklahoma. A Dallas family has a covering post and does not have to guess.
The post publishes its own particulars: 3040 Post Oak Blvd., ste 1250, Houston, TX 77056, telephone +1 (281) 822-0432, fax +1 (281) 822-0431, open Monday to Friday nine until six. Public reception is narrower, nine until one. There is an emergency line on +1 (832) 803-6247 and a hotline on +1 (832) 472-5579.
One detail matters more than the numbers. The consulate lists when it receives citizens outside working hours, at weekends and on holidays, and death is named in that list beside disaster, accident and arrest. A death in Dallas is an emergency there, not a Monday appointment.
One caution: on the day we read it, that post’s repatriation page carried telephone and fax numbers in a San Francisco area code that do not match the Houston numbers published elsewhere on its own site.
Two official lists, and the longer one is the one to use
Ukraine publishes its border-crossing requirements more than once, and the versions are not identical. The Houston consulate names two documents: a death certificate with an apostille and a notarised English-to-Ukrainian translation, and a document confirming the absence of any foreign objects inside the casket or urn, also apostilled and translated.
The Embassy of Ukraine in Washington names three. The same two, plus a certificate or affidavit from local health authorities stating that the cause of death was not a communicable disease, apostilled and translated like the rest. That third document is absent from the Houston page entirely.
There is a third list again, this one referenced to statute. Both posts publish, in identical wording, five items they attribute to Article 22 of the Law of Ukraine on funeral and burial services. We did not open the statute, so that article number is the posts’ attribution rather than something we checked.
Work to the union of the three. The originals, apostilled and translated, must travel physically with the casket or urn.
| Document | Where it appears |
|---|---|
| Death certificate, apostilled and translated | All three lists |
| No foreign objects in the casket or urn | Houston and the Embassy |
| Health letter: cause of death not communicable | The Embassy and Article 22 |
| Deceased’s passport or identity document | Article 22 |
| Written permission from the cemetery in Ukraine | Article 22 |
| Schedule of shipment | Article 22 |
The casket specification has a number and no unit
Ukraine is explicit that ashes and a body are not the same shipment. The Embassy states that there are no strict requirements with respect to the urn with ashes, and that a body should be transported in a metal casket made of zinc-plated steel or tinplate. The funeral home seals either one.
Then comes the sentence a funeral director has to ask about. The Embassy specifies that metal as not more than 0,4 thick, and publishes no unit at all. Not millimetres, not inches. We are not going to supply one. Millimetres is the obvious reading, and the obvious reading is what gets a container refused at a border, so ask the post in writing and get the unit back in writing.
The Houston version of the same rule says only that the body should be transported in a metal casket, naming neither material nor thickness.
What has to be arranged in Ukraine first
The slow part of a Ukrainian repatriation is not in Texas, and a family that starts it late loses a week.
A cemetery in Ukraine must give written permission, item four on the Article 22 list. For the air cargo movement, both posts require that a cemetery in Ukraine and a Ukrainian funeral home be specified, and both say the family chooses each privately. The Embassy has to be told the date, time and place of delivery. Only next of kin, or people they have properly authorised, may receive the casket or urn, so whoever will meet the shipment needs naming before it leaves Dallas.
One item runs the other way. The deceased’s passport goes to the Embassy with a notarised copy of the death certificate, its apostille and its translation; the Embassy carries out its own procedures and can return it if it has to accompany the remains. A death is reported to the Embassy’s consular office on (202) 349-2947, fax (202) 333-0817.
Fifteen dollars in Austin, and silence everywhere else
Ukraine has been inside the Apostille Convention since 22 December 2003; the HCCH status table records the accession on 2 April 2003. The Embassy says the same in its own words: United States documents for use in Ukraine are certified by apostille from the Secretary of State of the jurisdiction that issued them. For a Dallas death certificate that is Texas.
Texas charges fifteen dollars per document, and says expressly that this is per document and not per page. Death certificates are recordable documents and so are burial transit forms, which matters because Ukraine wants the supporting papers apostilled too. Recordable documents must be under five years old and must not be notarised, and the request has to name Ukraine as the destination country. In Austin it is same-day over the counter, ten documents at most; by post it is considerably slower.
Now the empty part. We read the complete consular menus of both posts — six items at Houston and ten at the Embassy — and neither publishes a fee schedule. Neither repatriation page names a fee in any currency. We cannot tell you what Ukraine charges for a consular act in a death case, and we will not estimate it.
Nine Ukrainian government pages were read for this guide and all nine answered normally. None publishes a notice that consular services are limited, suspended or relocated, and none says anything about airspace, flights, carriers or the arrival of remains in Ukraine. That silence is the finding and we are not filling it from elsewhere. The Embassy closes its own instructions by warning that these provisions may change without prior notification, and telling readers to contact the consul direct.
Questions families ask about a return to Ukraine
- Which Ukrainian consulate covers Dallas?
- Houston. The Consulate General of Ukraine in Houston publishes a consular district of seven states, and Texas is named on it.
- Do ashes need less paperwork than a casket for Ukraine?
- Not on the document side. The published border list is written to cover a casket or an urn alike. The difference is the container: no strict requirement for an urn, metal specified for a casket.
- What does the Ukrainian consulate charge?
- We could not establish it. We read both posts’ complete consular menus, six items and ten, and neither publishes a fee schedule or names an amount in any currency.
Sources checked and case confirmation
Sources checked September 22, 2026 on the Houston consulate pages for its district, the post itself and repatriation of deceased citizens; the Embassy of Ukraine pages for repatriation and civil registration; both consular menus in full; the HCCH status table for the Apostille Convention; and the Texas Secretary of State pages on authentication and on requesting a universal apostille. What this page deliberately does not claim: any consular fee, because neither post publishes one; the unit for the casket thickness figure, because the Embassy publishes a number without one; how a death abroad enters Ukrainian civil records; Ukraine’s position on the 1973 Strasbourg agreement, which we did not reach; and anything about airspace, flights or conditions on arrival, because no official source we read addresses them. No airline, route or crate specification is stated here. Contact Vargas-London with the region in Ukraine and where your relative is now, without sending medical or identity documents through the inquiry form.
