Dmytro Lubinets, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada, said that in April over 169,000 Ukrainians were left without pension payments due to bureaucratic delays, "Ukrinform" reported.
"Official data from the Pension Fund of Ukraine speak for themselves: at the end of 2025, over 1,033,574 people received pensions, while as of April 1, 2026, they were only 989,479. Over 169,000 citizens were actually left without pension payments in April.
Among them are the elderly, veterans and people with disabilities.
I call on the relatives of those who, for various reasons, were unable to submit an application in person, to help them complete the video identification and resume payments," the Ombudsman noted.
Lubinets emphasized that thousands of Ukrainians have been left without their legal pensions for months due to complex procedures and lack of coordination between state registers.
"I have repeatedly raised this issue with the relevant committee of the Verkhovna Rada and received support from the deputies, demanding one thing: state registers must finally "communicate" with each other. There are still no real changes! It should be noted that the delays are not due to the work of the Pension Fund of Ukraine employees, who perform their assigned tasks on a daily basis, but to the lack of relevant decisions at the government and ministerial level," he noted.
The Commissioner added that 70% of the complaints received by the Ombudsman's office are from internally displaced persons living in government-controlled territory. According to him, they are officially registered and entered into the databases of internally displaced persons, but the Pension Fund "does not see them" until the person concerned submits a personal application on paper.
"Let me give an example. Ms. Alla, who moved from the temporarily occupied territory of Luhansk region to Vinnytsia region in 2023, is a disabled woman who needs insulin; she survived for three months without payments because the system had stopped processing her benefits. Her rights were restored only after my personal intervention. But this is something that a functioning state system should do. My position is clear: the lack of timely decisions by the relevant ministry forces people to deal with bureaucracy on their own.
169,000 Ukrainians are waiting for the money they are due, not another standard answer," he noted.
As "Ukrinform" recalled, one-time payments of 1,500 hryvnias (€30) for pensioners and vulnerable groups began in Ukraine on April 1.