Ukrainian pensioners living abroad often face the sudden suspension of their pensions — and far from always is this lawful. Olga Khomich, an attorney at the Ivana Khomych Law Firm, explained in a comment to RBC-Ukraine in exactly which cases the Pension Fund of Ukraine (PFU) is entitled to stop payments, and in which cases it is obliged to resume them without any time limit. According to her, the key misconception that has undermined citizens' rights for years is that the state confuses simple residence abroad with the final “closing” of a pension file.

Historical context: how the law allowed “switching off” pensions abroad

Until 2009, the Law “On Mandatory State Pension Insurance” contained a direct provision: if a pensioner resided in a country with which Ukraine had no international agreement on social security, pension payments were stopped for the entire period of such residence. By its decision of 7 October 2009, No. 25-рп/2009, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared these provisions unconstitutional, and they lost force from the day the decision was adopted. As Olga Khomich emphasises, today the law itself no longer contains any grounds for “terminating a pension on account of residence abroad.” Nevertheless, in practice some pensioners, especially those who left as far back as the 1990s or earlier, still encounter attempts by the Fund to treat their file as closed.

How the “aliveness” of a pensioner abroad is now verified

Resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 299 of February 2025 and No. 765 of June 2025 established specific mechanisms by which the PFU is obliged to verify that a pensioner located abroad is alive and that it is indeed that person. Verification may be carried out through the “Diia” app, via video link, or through a consular institution of Ukraine. If a pensioner fails to undergo such verification within the established deadlines, payment is suspended — but not finally cancelled. This is a fundamental difference that, according to the attorney, the Fund often ignores, effectively turning a temporary pause into an indefinite termination.

Two situations that are confused: residence and official departure

Olga Khomich separately highlighted two fundamentally different situations that are often mixed up in practice. The first is when a person simply lives abroad, without formally registering departure from Ukraine. The second is when a pensioner officially registers departure for permanent residence abroad. In the case of an official departure, upon the pensioner’s application, the pension may be paid out in advance for six months, counted from the month following the month of deregistration at the place of residence in Ukraine. In effect, the person is removed from the register, and the Fund closes current payments with a one-off advance for half a year. However, as the lawyer emphasises, even after such a registered departure, the right to further payment is legally preserved for the person and does not extinguish forever.

Supreme Court practice and the question of indexation

It is precisely with pensioners who have officially registered departure that disputes most often arise in practice: the Fund tends to interpret deregistration and the one-off payment as the final closing of the pension file. Attorney Khomich notes that the right to a pension is preserved for such people regardless of place of residence, and that payment can be resumed without any time limit, since it was the state that failed to pay on time, not the pensioner through their own fault. The Supreme Court of Ukraine, according to her, regularly returns to this issue in the cases of people who left abroad as far back as the 1990s or even earlier, and each time confirms the preservation of the right. Moreover, a resumed pension must be calculated and indexed in the same way as for those who remained in Ukraine, and not at some artificially lowered minimum. “Practice in such cases is consistently in favour of the people,” Khomich summed up.

Contradictory data

No factual discrepancies between sources were identified in the material presented; however, there is a persistent contradiction between the regulatory position and the administrative practice of the PFU. On the one hand, the law and the decisions of the Constitutional and Supreme Courts clearly establish that the right to a pension is not terminated either by residence or by official departure abroad, and that suspension is possible only until the moment the person’s identity and “aliveness” are confirmed. On the other hand, at the level of operational procedures, the Fund, according to the attorney, systematically interprets deregistration and the payment of a six-month advance as the final closing of the file, forcing pensioners to spend years seeking resumption through the courts. Thus, the legal norm and its actual implementation diverge, and it is precisely this divergence that gives rise to mass disputes, which the Supreme Court resolves in favour of citizens.