State Pension Arrears: Why Winning a Court Case Fails to End the Dispute

In recent years, pension disputes in Ukraine have ceased to be merely a large category of administrative cases. The number of court decisions has increased more than 26-fold to 758,000, while officially recorded arrears in pension payments accrued pursuant to court judgments exceeded UAH 91 billion at the beginning of 2026. Yet the main problem today is not even the size of this amount. Increasingly, obtaining a final judgment in favour of a pensioner does not end the dispute with the state. Once litigation over the right to recalculation is completed, another dispute arises — over enforcement of the judgment already delivered.

As a result, a kind of second round of pension litigation has emerged, and in 2026 the Supreme Court is expected to determine the rules governing it.

When Thousands of Identical Cases Point to a Systemic Problem

A significant proportion of pension proceedings concern indexation, recalculation of military pensions, application of the monthly UAH 2,000 supplement, maximum pension caps, and the inclusion of remuneration, insurance periods and earnings in pension calculations. Not all of these issues have been conclusively settled by case law. At the same time, in many categories the Supreme Court has already developed sufficiently clear legal positions, yet similar disputes continue to reach the courts on a massive scale.

A notable example is the judgment of the Administrative Court of Cassation within the Supreme Court of 16 April 2025 in case No. 200/5836/24. The dispute concerned the indexation of a pension awarded in 2020. The Pension Fund had refused to index the average salary indicator for 2018–2020 that had been used when calculating the pension. The Supreme Court found this approach unlawful and held that, when annually indexing pensions awarded under Law No. 1058-IV, the indicator to be increased is the average salary figure actually used to calculate the particular pension. In that case, the Court ordered the corresponding recalculation with effect from 1 March 2024.

The significance of this case extends well beyond the rights of a single claimant. Where the legal issue is typical and the court of cassation has already defined its position, thousands of subsequent identical claims indicate that the judicial ruling has failed to translate into a change in administrative practice.

At the same time, it would be incorrect to reduce current case law to the proposition that “the Pension Fund always loses.” In model case No. 400/6254/24, the Supreme Court examined on 16 December 2024 the issue of payments following a court-ordered recalculation of a military pension. On 13 March 2025, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court upheld that judgment. The Court found that a recalculation of a military pension pursuant to a court judgment, taking into account increased basic salaries and rank-related pay, constitutes a recalculation resulting in an increase in the pension. Depending on the circumstances, this may provide grounds for discontinuing the monthly UAH 2,000 supplement established by Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 713 and may also affect the application of indexation. This conclusion continues to be applied in 2026. In particular, the Administrative Court of Cassation relied on it in its judgment of 9 March 2026 in case No. 320/11018/25. Alongside them, however, there is an enormous body of cases in which courts are effectively deciding the same legal issue over and over again.

UAH 91 Billion in Arrears

Enforcement of judgments that have already been delivered has become a separate problem. In July 2025, by Resolution No. 821, the Cabinet of Ministers approved a special procedure governing expenditure from the Pension Fund budget for payments pursuant to court judgments. In effect, repayment of arrears was made dependent on available budget appropriations: available funds were distributed among recipients, while unpaid balances were carried forward to subsequent budget periods. With arrears exceeding UAH 91 billion, the Pension Fund's 2026 budget provides approximately UAH 1 billion for payments under court judgments, including repayment of debts accumulated in previous years.

However, the attempt to manage the problem through a budget-funded queue gave rise to a new judicial dispute. On 4 March 2026, the Kyiv Court, in case No. 320/51895/25, declared Resolution No. 821 unlawful and invalid. On 8 June, the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal upheld that judgment. The position cannot yet be regarded as final, however: the Supreme Court has opened cassation proceedings and the case remains under review. The outcome will have implications far beyond an individual pension dispute, as the case essentially concerns the permissible limits of budgetary regulation of the enforcement of court judgments.

Back to Court After Winning in Court?

In spring 2026, another fundamental question arose before the Supreme Court: what remedy should a pensioner use when a judgment in their favour has already been delivered but has not been properly enforced? On 30 April 2026, the Administrative Court of Cassation adopted two different approaches. In case No. 620/13341/25, the Court held that the dispute concerned enforcement of an existing judgment and therefore did not require a new administrative claim. Instead, the pensioner should use the special mechanisms of judicial supervision over enforcement provided by the Code of Administrative Procedure of Ukraine.

However, in case No. 340/7985/25, decided on the same day, a different approach was accepted: the Pension Fund's application of Resolution No. 821 may be challenged through a separate administrative action because, in doing so, the Pension Fund exercises public administrative powers. To resolve this inconsistency, case No. 580/490/26 has been referred to a judicial chamber of the Administrative Court of Cassation. Its future ruling may determine the procedural route for a large number of pensioners who have already won their original cases but have not received the amounts awarded.

The Problem Is Shifting from the Legal to the Administrative Sphere

The current situation effectively creates five consecutive stages: a pensioner challenges the calculation or recalculation of their pension, wins the case, receives an assessment of arrears for the previous period, waits years for payment, and then has to resort to judicial remedies again because the original judgment has not been enforced. Such a model does not resolve the problem — it reproduces it.

Where the Supreme Court has already established settled case law for a typical category of disputes, it would be more rational to align administrative practice with that position for everyone in an equivalent legal situation. Otherwise, the state does not avoid the financial obligation; it merely adds the costs of the Pension Fund's administration, litigation through three levels of courts, enforcement proceedings and repeated judicial supervision.

The same applies to accumulated arrears. Budgetary constraints may spread payments over time, but they do not eliminate either the judgment or the state's obligation established by it.