Work records from Russia and Belarus: Ukrainian courts are increasingly reversing the Pension Fund's denials

How Ukraine's Pension Fund is handling foreign work experience

According to ХВИЛЯ: Ukraine's Pension Fund (PFU) is declining to credit employment periods in Russia or Belarus between 1992 and 2003 toward a person's insurance record, citing the termination of interstate agreements. But courts are now regularly overturning these rejections. Their reasoning is that the end of an agreement cannot be applied retroactively to time when the agreement was still in effect. For anyone hoping to challenge such a refusal, the decisive factor is producing documents that confirm work was performed during the agreement's validity. This matters because many Ukrainians who worked abroad in the post-Soviet years depend on these periods to build a sufficient pension record at home.

Agreement-based rules for crediting employment periods

The PFU states that work carried out in the former USSR before 31 December 1991 is recognized under the general rules. The CIS agreement on guarantees of citizens' rights was signed on 13 March 1992, while the separate agreement with Belarus was signed on 14 December 1995. However, the CIS agreement ceased to apply on 19 June 2023, and the Belarus agreement ended on 23 December 2023. As a result, the PFU finds no grounds to include work in Russia or Belarus from 01.01.1992 through 31.12.2003.

Svitlana Dovhal, deputy head of the PFU board, explained:

"given these provisions, there are no grounds for adding periods of employment in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus from 01.01.1992 to 31.12.2003 to the insurance record"

. Courts, however, have begun reviewing these refusals and ordering the Pension Fund to recognize the disputed years. In one case, Olha Semeniuk, a lawyer from Cherkasy, represented a woman whose nearly 15 years of work in Russia during the 1990s had not been counted. The court ordered the PFU to include the entire contested period, because the woman's employment fell within the agreement's period of validity.

In another example, the Zaporizhzhia District Administrative Court reviewed a case concerning work in Russia from 2004 to 2007 and ruled that the PFU's refusal was unlawful. The court noted:

"these circumstances do not relate to the claimant's working periods that occurred while the above agreement was in force"

. A clear pattern is therefore emerging: courts are increasingly rejecting PFU decisions when claimants have documents proving their employment during the term of a valid international agreement.

This situation underscores how essential it is for people who worked in Russia or Belarus while the agreements were still active to hold onto evidence of their employment. As courts more frequently side with claimants, the handling of pension rights appears to be shifting, offering fresh possibilities for those trying to regain access to their pension benefits.