On February 20, Ukraine and the rest of the world celebrate the Day of Social Justice. But what are we really celebrating? Equality of opportunities or a farce in which officials declare loud promises, and reality shatters them into dust? Social justice is not the words of politicians’ speeches or slogans at rallies, but fair rules of the game, decent wages and the absence of a caste system of privileges. However, in a country where deputies, judges and civil servants receive hundreds of thousands of hryvnias, doctors, teachers and ordinary workers are forced to look for a second or third job, and pensioners barely survive, justice looks more like a theatrical set. It is in words, but behind the scenes another reality operates – privileges for the chosen ones, inequality as a system and impunity as a norm. So is there anything to celebrate?
The gap between “simple” and “chosen” in real numbers
Article 48 of the Constitution of Ukraine guarantees every citizen has the right to a sufficient standard of living for himself and his family, which includes sufficient food, clothing, and housing. However, the “adequate level” for some reason does not correspond at all to the prices of products, utilities and medicine in the country.
Official monthly minimum wage in Ukraine in 2025 is 8,000 hryvnias. But let’s take as an example the rate of a young teacher without category and seniority, which amounts to UAH 5,699 and is even less than the minimum wage. In general, the amount of a teacher’s salary depends very much on factors such as teaching experience and workload. But even allowances can do little good. Thus, there is a constant shortage of hours in the periphery due to the low number of children. The maximum allowance can be about UAH 1,500, provided that it is no more than 30% of the rate and no less than 5%. However, some local communities charge the minimum. The Ministry also came up with the certification of teachers, which will give 20% to the salary. But this 20% is unlikely to help much at current prices.
More than 50% of teachers say that financial conditions are the main reason why educators leave the profession en masse. While the salary of a Ukrainian teacher is more like pocket expenses of European colleagues than a decent wage. If teachers in Poland receive $1,200–1,500, in the Czech Republic – from $1,400, and in Germany this sum reaches $4,000–5,000, then in Ukraine the average income of a teacher barely reaches $300–400. The difference is striking, especially considering the level of responsibility, which does not vary from country to country. And the Minister of Education, Oksen Lisovyi, with his salary of 76,000 hryvnias, declares that there are no payments for teachers in the state budget.
A similar situation with wages led to a medical collapse in the country. Despite the state’s loud statements about raising the level of wages for medical workers, it remains one of the lowest in the economy. The salary of doctors is increasing, but the question arises as to how adequate its level is in modern realities. The average salary of a medical worker in Ukraine is UAH 16,000. Its level is affected by the position, experience of the doctor and scope of his duties. It is worth noting that not the last role in the amount of a doctor’s salary is played by his place of work. A doctor in the capital earns the most (17,500 UAH). A doctor from Zaporizhzhia receives UAH 14,000. The lowest paid is the work of a doctor from Kharkiv (13,500 UAH). The Armed Forces of Ukraine have many medical workers who perform their duty in extremely difficult conditions, exposing themselves to constant danger. Their work is evaluated as follows:
- junior medical workers – UAH 9,000;
- nurses and nurses – UAH 18,000;
- doctors and pharmacists, as well as persons with non-medical education in the medical field receive UAH 28,000.
At the same time, there is a very noticeable imbalance between the incomes of medical workers who hold administrative positions (the average salary is 23.5 thousand UAH) and medical personnel who are directly involved in medical practice (the average salary is slightly more than 8 thousand UAH). That is why we observe a sad picture, when every day dozens of qualified doctors are forced to leave the country not because of desire, but because of the impossibility to live and work with dignity in their country. A doctor with 20 years of experience earns so much in Ukraine that he cannot provide for his family.
At the same time, his colleagues in Europe earn many times more for the same work. This cannot help but encourage the search for a better destiny abroad. And it is not surprising, because in neighboring countries, the salary for their work by profession is on average 4-5 times higher than the Ukrainian one. According to various sources, Ukrainian nurses abroad are offered a salary of 700 euros per month at the initial stage of work. Qualified doctors in Europe can earn between 1,500 and 3,500 euros.
During the wartime, the sphere of energy industry of Ukraine is experiencing some of the most terrible challenges. Every day, both day and night, energy workers are forced to go to destroyed objects and repair them under constant fire. The average salary of an engineer in Ukraine is UAH 13,363. Wages here vary depending on specialization and region. Most receives an energy engineer from the Zaporizhia region – UAH 16,900, in the Dnipropetrovsk region – UAH 12,567, in the Kharkiv region. – UAH 12,093, in Odesa region the lowest figure is UAH 9,350. Employees of the energy sector repeatedly come under fire while performing repair and restoration work. During the period of the full-scale invasion, there are already about 100 dead energy workers, and twice as many wounded. The question arises as to whether the salary of UAH 13,363 corresponds to all the risks and incredibly difficult working conditions that energy workers are exposed to every day. But for some reason, none of the deputies has submitted for consideration the issue of raising the wages of such employees. After all, the functioning of many spheres in the state depends on them.
An even sadder situation has developed with Ukrainian pensioners, people who in their youth worked for the benefit of the country, gave their health to hard work, and now are barely making ends meet. Those who will soon reach retirement age are clutching their heads in despair, because the retirement age is constantly increasing, but health in the current realities is only getting worse. According to the Pension Fund of Ukraine, the average pension payment in Ukraine as of January 1, 2025 was UAH 5,789.05. Besides budget declaration for 2025-2027 no increase in these payments is foreseen. Living on a Ukrainian pension is a daily challenge. You have to pay more than half of your payments for utility bills, medicine is so expensive that you have to choose between health and food, and food prices are rising faster than the government has time to transfer pensions.
Those who have worked all their lives are now forced to save on the most necessary. And the officials talk about social guarantees, paying particular attention to indexation. But even here, everything is not as simple as it seems. If the pension is 1,230 hryvnias, and together with additional payments it is 2,361 hryvnias, then after indexation by 10% the basic amount will increase to 1,353 hryvnias. However, the additional payment will decrease accordingly, so the total amount of the pension will remain unchanged – 2,361 hryvnias. Our pensioners have nothing to be happy about, but continue to count pennies and think about how to live until the next payment.
Instead, the average amount of a prosecutor’s pension is UAH 21,940, and the average amount of a retired judge’s lifetime allowance is UAH 99,737 per month. The monthly maintenance of retired judges immediately jumped by 22,000. As you can see, the average judge’s pension is 17 times higher than the usual one.
The living wage for able-bodied citizens remains at UAH 3,028, and the minimum wage is UAH 8,000, and officials continue to assure us that there is social justice in the country. At the same time, deputies of the Verkhovna Rada receive more than 50,000 hryvnias every month, not including bonuses, compensation for housing and transport, and high-ranking officials and heads of state enterprises can have an income of hundreds of thousands of hryvnias.
Officials cannot find funds in the state budget to increase the level of salaries and pension payments for ordinary citizens, at the same time as the Verkhovna Rada on November 19, 2024 calmly approved its estimate for 2025, according to which the norms of expenses for one People’s Deputy of Ukraine will be:
- UAH 90,000 – funds to compensate for the cost of traveling through the territory of Ukraine, which are issued monthly to a people’s deputy;
- UAH 1.59 million – a fund for the payment of assistants-consultants of the people’s deputy of Ukraine;
- UAH 350,000 – accrual for the remuneration of assistants-consultants of the people’s deputy of Ukraine;
- UAH 8,000 – secondment of assistants-consultants of People’s Deputies of Ukraine to electoral districts (calculated for 10 months);
- UAH 2,000 – reimbursement of costs for the maintenance of premises in electoral districts;
- UAH 237.9 thousand – funds to compensate for the cost of renting a house or renting a hotel room;
- UAH 670 – reimbursement of expenses related to the organization and holding of meetings of the people’s deputy of Ukraine with voters.
Somehow people’s elected officials cost the country too much compared to the ordinary population. Officials constantly remind us that there is a war in the country and it is not easy for everyone, so we need to tighten our belts as much as possible. But if we compare the situation with pension payments for judges from the first years of the war, we have the following picture:
- in 2022, the Pension Fund allocated UAH 4.1 billion for these payments;
- in 2023 – UAH 4.4 billion;
- in 2024, the amount increased to UAH 5 billion.
In the Verkhovna Rada, these expenses are called only an insignificant part of the general budget, which, they say, does not create a significant burden on the state. People say that a full person is not a friend to a hungry person. And this simple truth is true at all times.
Social equality in the USSR: was it there
The Soviet Union declared itself as a country of equal opportunities, where “from each – according to abilities, to each – according to work.” Textbooks depicted a world where a factory worker and a party worker have equal rights, and salaries do not divide people into castes.
Officially, the salary difference in the USSR was insignificant. A worker could receive 120–150 rubles a month, an engineer – 170–200 rubles, and a factory director – 250–300 rubles. It was a far cry from the chasm seen in modern capitalism, where corporate executives earn hundreds of times more than their subordinates.
But this is only part of the truth. The nominal wages did look socially fair, but there were a lot of hidden privileges. The nomenclature had a special status – middle and higher-level officials. Officials, party elite, generals and academics had access to special distributors, sanatoriums, closed shops with scarce goods, individual medical facilities and housing. While an ordinary person stood in line for butter or sausage, a member of the Central Committee could get products without problems.
If something really equalized all citizens of the USSR, it was a deficit. Regardless of the profession, people were looking for ways to get goods: from imported boots to normal sausage. A conditional doctor and a teacher could earn almost the same, but someone who had acquaintances in the trade field could live much better. This is how another unofficial hierarchy was formed: not by salary, but by access to benefits. Someone who worked in the system had much more opportunities than a simple worker. If for the average Soviet citizen, getting housing meant waiting in line, then for the party elite, apartments, cottages, and cars were provided automatically. At the same time, ordinary people still received apartments.
In addition, unemployment in those days did not exist at all, everyone had guaranteed housing, quality medicine and education. The USSR really created a certain version of social equality. However, this equality was manifested selectively: as long as everyone stood in the same queue for milk, the real elite lived by different rules. At the same time, that inequality is extremely far from the modern one.
How social equality manifests itself abroad
In most developed countries, salaries and pensions do not become a privilege only for the chosen ones. Here, the ratio between minimum and high wages is regulated at the level of legislation and collective agreements. For example, in France, Germany or the Scandinavian countries, the gap between the minimum wage and the average level of income in the public sector is much smaller than in the post-Soviet countries.
For comparison, in Germany, the minimum wage in 2024 is approximately €2,000 gross per month, and the average salary of a teacher is €4,000-€5,000. This is not a fantastic profit, but it is enough for a comfortable life. At the same time, the salary of the German chancellor, which is about 30,000 euros, is not an unattainable figure compared to the average level of income of citizens.
In the Scandinavian countries, the system is even more even: Denmark, Sweden and Norway have strong unions that ensure a balanced level of income and prevent top managers from receiving space bonuses at the expense of ordinary workers.
Separately, it is worth paying attention to civil servants. In many countries, their salaries are really decent, but without hypertrophied allowances and privileges. For example, in Finland and Sweden, the minister’s salary exceeds the average level of salaries in the country by only 4-5 times. At the same time, civil servants have the same social guarantees as other citizens, without separate “golden parachutes” in the form of extremely high pensions.
For example, in Germany or France, although pension payments depend on length of service and contributions to the system, they allow the elderly to live with dignity, rather than counting every cent. At the same time, the gap between ordinary pensioners and those who worked in public positions is not as stunning as in Ukraine. So, in Germany, judges retire under the Beamtenversorgungsgesetz, and its amount depends on length of service and salary. On average, this is between €4,000 and €6,000 per month, while the typical pension for citizens in 2023 was around €1,500.
In Europe or the USA, the pensions of high-ranking officials and judges are higher, but they do not reach absurd levels, when one receives tens of thousands of euros, while the other is forced to survive on pennies.
Many countries have a mechanism that ensures stability of payments and recalculation depending on the level of inflation. In Ukraine, pensioners can expect an increase of several hundred hryvnias, which is instantly eaten up by the rise in prices for basic products and services.
Social justice in its true sense implies not only equal rights, but also equal opportunities and an adequate level of remuneration. In conditions where budget expenditures are distributed in such a way that the least protected sections of the population receive the minimum, and the officials receive the maximum, this concept remains only a political decoration. As long as social standards are subject to manipulation, rather than the real provision of a decent life for all citizens, talk of equality will remain only part of the big political game and an empty slogan.
