In Ukraine, lonely elderly people who have crossed the 80-year threshold are entitled to a monthly pension supplement of 1038 hryvnias. This was reported by RBK-Ukraine, citing the Department of Social Protection of the Sumy region. To receive the payment, the pensioner needs to provide only one key document — a medical certificate issued by a family doctor. The supplement is not credited automatically: the initiative and submission of the application rest with the applicant themselves.

Three mandatory conditions for receiving the supplement

The right to an additional payment arises only if three criteria are met simultaneously. First, the applicant's age must be 80 years or older. Second, the pensioner must be lonely in a social sense: they must not have working-age relatives — children or grandchildren — who are legally obligated to support them. Third, there must be a valid medical certificate from a family doctor confirming the applicant's health status and actual residence. All three conditions are verified by the competent authority when considering the application.

When the supplement is not granted: the role of working-age relatives

The key limitation is the presence of healthy adult children. If a pensioner has working-age children, the supplement is not granted regardless of whether they live with their parents, separately in another city, or abroad. The law considers the obligation to support as unconditional, not tying it to actual cohabitation. However, the situation changes radically if the children themselves have reached pension age or have an established disability group. In such cases, they are not considered working-age, and the right to payment for a lonely pensioner is preserved.

Payment amount and link to the subsistence minimum

The supplement amounts to 40% of the subsistence minimum for non-working persons. At present, this figure is fixed at 1038 hryvnias per month. It is important that the payment amount is not static: with any increase in the subsistence minimum in Ukraine, the supplement is automatically indexed proportionally. This means that in the future, the amount may increase without the need to resubmit documents.

Registration procedure: where to apply and what to bring

Money does not go to the pensioner's account automatically. To receive the supplement, you must personally or through a trusted person contact the branch of the Pension Fund of Ukraine or the Department of Social Protection of the Population at the place of residence. The application indicates personal data, confirms the lonely status, and a medical certificate from a family doctor is attached to the package of documents. After checking all conditions, the supplement begins to accrue from the month following the month of application submission.

Broader context: pension reform and other supplements

The supplement under consideration is just one element of social support for the elderly. Earlier, RBK-Ukraine reported that pensioners with excessive insurance experience can also receive a supplement: for each year of experience exceeding the established norm, 1% of the pension is accrued, and the maximum amount for 20 years of excess reaches 519 hryvnias monthly. Meanwhile, a large-scale pension reform has been announced in the Verkhovna Rada. The head of the Finance Committee, Danylo Hetmantsev, stated that it is planned to change the pension calculation formula and introduce a savings level, which could raise the minimum pension to 6–7 thousand hryvnias. The reform is at the discussion stage and could significantly change the entire pension system in the country.