Budget Committee to oblige the government to verify Ukrainians receiving ‘Chornobyl pensions’

In Ukraine, from now on, the pension supplement for people living in the resettlement zones after the Chornobyl disaster will be provided only to those who actually lived in the exclusion zone between 1986 and 1993. Roksolana Pidlasa, Chair of the Verkhovna Rada Budget Committee, spoke about the relevant amendments to draft law No. 12000 on the State Budget for 2025, which were supported by the committee. According to Pidlasa, payments to the new ‘settlers’ will cost the budget about UAH 15 billion, so an accurate verification is needed.
The Committee proposed a new article to the draft budget for 2025, according to which, during martial law in Ukraine, additional payments to non-working pensioners permanently residing in the zones of unconditional and guaranteed voluntary resettlement will be made only if these people lived or worked in these territories as of 26 April 1986 or in the period from 1986 to 1993. These persons are granted the status of victims of the Chornobyl disaster.
The amount of this supplement is set at UAH 2,361. However, if a person changed his or her place of residence after the Chornobyl accident on his or her own or at the direction of the administration and subsequently returned to these territories, he or she will not be entitled to the additional payment. The same applies to people who moved to the resettlement zones after the Chornobyl accident.
Payments will cease if the pensioner leaves the place of permanent residence in these areas, which will be confirmed by data from the Unified State Demographic Register and other registers.
The Pension Fund of Ukraine has been instructed to verify the data on the place of permanent residence of the recipients of this supplement with state registers by 1 January 2025 to determine further payments. The amounts of additional payments and pension benefits will also be brought in line with this article.
In addition, the Committee recommends that expenditures for the implementation of retrospective court decisions and the recalculation of pensions for 2025 should be made from separate sources of the Pension Fund. The Cabinet of Ministers should develop a relevant procedure.
It is also proposed that the Cabinet of Ministers should introduce a new mechanism for calculating points for pension rights and determining the amount of pension payments from 1 July 2025.