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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)….?
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.