Pension payments to Ukrainian members of parliament and judges in 2025
In 2025, 913 current lawmakers and judges officially receive pension benefits, representing 14% of all officials who have filed electronic declarations. This article examines the scale of these payouts, including recipient counts, median amounts, and record-high sums. For context, Ukraine's overall pension system covers over 10 million retirees, with the vast majority receiving far smaller payments.
Median pension amounts and record payouts
Among active MPs and judges, the median annual pension stands at roughly 228,000 hryvnias, or about 19,000 hryvnias per month. Fifty-five sitting parliamentarians currently collect a pension. The highest individual payouts include:
- Vasyl Nimchenko, a former judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, receives 2.3 million hryvnias per year—over 192,000 hryvnias monthly.
- Mykhailo Novikov, a lawmaker and lawyer who previously served as a judge, gets 1.46 million hryvnias annually (nearly 122,000 hryvnias per month).
- Andriy Kozhemiakin, a long-time MP and lieutenant general, collects 973,000 hryvnias per year, exceeding 81,000 hryvnias monthly.
Ukraine has 10.17 million pensioners total. Of these, 73% (7.4 million people) receive old-age pensions. Nearly 1.5 million citizens, or 15%, rely on disability benefits. About 700,000 (7%) receive survivor pensions, while 5% (500,000) have long-service pensions. Social pensions and lifetime judicial maintenance account for less than 1%. The minimum pension in Ukraine is 3,400 hryvnias.
Among judges, 858 individuals have declared pension income. The absolute record belongs to former judge Viktor Shkolyarov, whose annual pension approaches 3 million hryvnias. The highest monthly payment to a single judge reached 249,900 hryvnias. These figures highlight a stark contrast between the pensions of top officials and those of ordinary Ukrainians under the general pension system.
This information underscores the existing inequality in Ukraine's pension system, where public officials receive substantially larger sums compared to average pensions for most citizens.
Given the social challenges facing the country, such data may spark debate about the fairness and justification of these payments for high-ranking state officials.