Volodymyr Zelenskiy declared his personal income for the first time since the outbreak of war with Russia, as part of his effort to increase transparency in his government.
In 2021, the year before Russia invaded Ukraine, Zelenskiy and his family reported income of 10.8 million hryvnia ($285,000), down 12 million hryvnia from the previous year, even as his income was boosted by the sale of $142,000 of government bonds, according to a statement on his website.
In 2022, the first year of the Russian invasion, the Zelenskiy family’s income fell further to 3.7 million hryvnia as he earned less income from renting real estate he owned because of the hostilities.
Even as the war allowed Ukrainian officials to withhold revealing sensitive personal information, Zelenskiy pushed to make them publicly declare assets. Increasing transparency and tackling graft are necessary for his country to ensure continued financial aid from its western allies, even as more than $100 billion of funds are held up due to political maneuvering inside US and EU.
Gotta say, that’s an almost aggressively reasonable salary for running an entire country,
I’d consider myself pretty well taken care of for that level of pay.
This is what still blows me away.
A fucking actor is doing a better job running a country specifically during wartime than a typical politician.
It’s fuckin embarrassing to every single person on this planet who’s dealing with stupid/corrupt/inept politicians who would sell their constituents for fuckin toilet paper.
Calling him just an actor is sort of unfair to him though. He was basically Ukraine’s Jon Stewart. He does a great job as a politician because he spent years satirizing them, so he knows how the sausage is made and he knows how they totally fuck up and how to avoid it. That’s why he’s so successful at his job.
And, I imagine, if Jon Stewart ever ran for office, he would do similarly well.
Tbf, the US tried the actor president twice, and they turned out to be the two worst presidents in modern US history, so it might not always be the best idea to elect the “outsider”.
I think the Ukrainian public decided to throw a curveball that Putin and the KGB could never predict - electing an absolute outsider who the KGB didn’t have time to corrupt
You know what? I still argues it’s a great idea to pay government positions well. Let there be no need for bribes or underhanded deals. You want them to also be able to take care of themselves for the stress and it should be something that people want to achieve because of what a good job it is then prove they are right for it so that there is a pool of smart people willing to do it rather than a job managing HR for Facebook cause it pays better.
But maybe I just like the idea of a country that takes care to make sure they are taking care of people.
In theory the idea is great. Unfortunately in reality people in those positions are fucking greedy and will throw citizens under the bus to get a few extra bucks. In South Africa we see the ruling party ANC politicians who earn decent money but they still can’t keep their fucking greasy hands out of the cookie jar. It’s pretty fucking disgusting since their is still so much poverty in the country but they will rather steal to enrich themselves.
In the US too, senators get paid ~190k/year and continually throw their constituents under the bus for campaign contributions of just a few hundred to a few thousand dollars from lobbyists
Agreed. We should (in the US) pay really high salaries to government officials, especially executive office/legislators/judges. Provide huge benefits like paid education and lifetime medical coverage for children and spouses (even if you retire), and a one time home purchase up to a certain amount in any location on retirement. It’s yours and if you sell it, the income is yours too. Pension equivalent to salary, which is raised whenever it’s increased for active government officials, and continues for your spouse after you die.
But in return, you and your spouse must fully divest yourself of any investments of any kind. You must sell any properties you own beyond a home in your constituent state. A home in DC will be provided, if applicable. Your spouse also may not have investments or own properties. Your adult children may have investments if they’re managed by a blind trust.
After you retire, or “age out” at the current full social security age, or at the end of your assigned term after reaching that age, you may not ever hold another job ever again. You may not receive income in any form other than what is paid to you by the pension fund. You (and your spouse) may not own investments of any kind.
Don’t like it? Cool, don’t run for office.
I’d cap every civil servant income to 5 median salaries. If that’s too not enough, run your country better.
This is close to reasonable. But the argument politicians shouldn’t be paid well is bad. If you can’t earn a good income as a politician, then the only people that can be politicians are those that are already wealthy.
A working class person (or background) that can do well as a minister will struggle to put their family in the position of earning a reduced salary compared to a job in the private sector that will pay them more.
A good example of this problem is Rishi Sunak. His wife is a billionaire. He doesn’t need a salary and PM. He has extended internal combustion engine sales deadline, supported the war in Gaza as soon as a Gaza permit for BP was announced and spitefully stopped the expansion of high speed rail by selling off the land purchased for it. All these actions are in direct support of BP a company his wife directly benefits from.
It would be much better if our politicians earned their income through their salary. We have a dearth of talent due to low pay and high stress roles, only those that are swindling millions out of it are willing to endure.
Easy. If we find any income other than salary, linked to your decisions or not, that’s years or decades of manual labor for you. If your spouse is a millionaire, a business owner or even just a hired worker who doesn’t agree to the same level of scrutiny until the end of their lives, no politics for you. Leave politics to saints who serve their people for ideological reasons only. Politics is not supposed to be appealing.
I think the money is not that important at this stage. As an important figure you will get a lot of favours and freebies from people and companies, so you dont pass regulations that would hurt their bottom line. You also have a lot more opportunities later by being spokesperson for other organisations, can write books because everyone knows your name or get hired by a big company, because you already know half the politicians they deal with.
Bruh everything about zelenksy is fucking incredible. What a guy
I think we’re gonna learn some things about him after this war is over that we won’t like. He’s doing great as a war time president, but no one is this squeaky clean.
…and that is okay. He is still doing an incredible job and is an incredible public figure.
Nobody is perfect, nor do they have to be.
True.
For example Churchill: great wartime PM, but also very much an anti-worker free market believing imperialist who actively fought against both independence for and immigration from the British colonies. People tend to only remember the first part, though.
My dad, who was a socialist until the day he died, told me proudly about how he booed Churchill when Churchill came to visit his high school after the war, but when he was still PM. He was Jewish, so he appreciated Churchill’s war leadership that kept the Nazis from invading, but otherwise thought he was a shit leader.
And wasn’t he kinda known for being a drunk? (Still one of the most quotable people in recent history)
Yeah we are? Most normal people don’t have huge skeletons in their closet.
Here’s his approval rating over time that reflects this point perfectly. He’s supported in his actions during the war way more than he was as a politician, he was actually doing pretty badly before the war in his approvals. Interested to see how the prolonged conflict affects this, and what the regional differences are.
But you could say the same thing about you, just you’re not in a spotlight. What’s the point of even saying ‘everyone has something’.
Yes, I am included in ‘everyone’.
The reason I say it is because Zelensky has been put on a pretty high pedestal, for example:
bruh everything about zelensky is incredible. What a guy
And some folks are going to be sorely disappointed later on when they learn more about him and where his failings lie.
The hypocrisy in his support for Israel is infuriating, but otherwise yeah.
I mean he’s a politician and in order to protect his people he has to suck up to the US.
He deserves every damn penny of it, and more.
His country is on the line and he is dependent on the West for support. Ukraine has nothing to gain and everything to lose from supporting Palestinians.
Edit: Huh, could’ve sworn the message I replied to read that Zelensky’s support for Israel is infuriating.
Israel is one of the major weapons manufacturers that are exporting weapons for Ukraine to use against Russia. I would love Zelensky to take an anti-Israel stance, but I don’t know that he can afford to right now.
As the guy who wrote that: Yeah I guess it’s inevitable given the current situation, though I’d at least want him to stay silent instead of going on about Israel’s right to defend itself. I more meant in general, but now that I think about it I don’t remember him going above and beyond for Israel before 2023.
Don’t give too much air to that argument, drawing broad comparisons between the legitimate struggle of the sovereign country of Ukraine against Russia and the Israeli response to the all out terrorist attacks of Gaza against them is pretty insulting to Ukraine. I’d imagine zelensky being jewish is also somewhat of a factor in his perspective.
I swear, I’ve been seeing so many different spellings of his last name lately. I’ve seen -sky, -skyy, -skey, and now -skiy. I wonder why different outlets seem to be using different spellings.
His actual name is written in Cyrillic so the latinized versions are all just ways of trying to write a bunch of latin letters that roughly correspond to how his name is pronounced. That’s going to be quite different across languages that use the latin alphabet, even across different accents in the same language.
If you were to write a word like 🚽 the way it actually sounds, would it be toy-let (canadian), tuy-leht, (if you’re from parts of britain) tay-let (if you’re australian), tee-let (new zealand)….?
Very much this.
The suffix at the end of that last name is also causing some trouble:
- In Ukrainian, it’s Зеленський (note the “ь”, a silent letter supposed to soften the consonant before itself)
- In Russian, it’s Зеленский (no “ь”, the “н” is not soft)
- In Polish, it’s Zełenski (no “й” or anything similar, resulting in a different pronunciation again)
Now compare it to the last name of a Polish author: Сапковський (Ukrainian), Сапковский (Russian), Sapkowski (Polish).
Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles all have examples of last names like these, but the rules of our languages dictate that we handle them differently, even in terms of spelling and pronunciation; for people not speaking a Slavic language naturally, it understandably is a nightmare, as neither spelling is objectively the right one in terms of linguistics.
For now, it’s probably best to either go with one of the following:
- Zelensky or Zelenski, akin to Polish equivalent spelling of similar last names
- Zelenskyy, as seems to be the more or less official or judicial spelling of this Ukrainian last name
As messy as it seems, I believe it’s going to stay the same. Romanization of the Russian language is already an equally messy phenomenon despite multiple efforts to standardize the process, yet it only resulted in several ways of tackling the difficult cases, which is of very little help; Ukrainian seems to be an even more complicated case for romanization as it has some features that would either require intricate rules to create accurate spellings, or make greater use of diacritics.
Slavs are pretty fucked. My fav is a name Артём that defies any hope for a consistent translation.
As someone who is learning Japanese all languages should translate words phonetically
I’m Australian and we don’t pronounce it “tay-let”
That sounds like someone trying to badly imitate Australian accents but having the pronunciation very wrong
I don’t know how you managed to butcher it so badly
All my life I have pronounced it “toy-let” and I grew up in Australia
“tay-let” sounds like some weird portmanteau with “taylor” and “let”
Is there not a standardized translation for Ukrainian Cyrillic to English? Every other language seems to manage it.
Also accents don’t change your spelling. We all still spell it toilet.
It’s a bit more difficult, since you have to substitute letters and pronunciations that don’t really exist in the Latin alphabet e.g. Я>ya, Щ>shch. For English there is no one correct pronunciation of words so there are regional differences. The the way you would write these sounds drifts even further apart in other languages, in German I would write the two examples like: Я>ja, Щ>schtsch
Not sure if that helps but translating what essentially boils down to different sounds is a bit of a mess.
I thought this thumbnail was showing his legs behind his ears lmao
