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.
Don’t forget, he was a very well known actor and comedian before.
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.
imagine, if Jon Stewart ever ran for office
Please, I can only get so erect. I’d tune in 24/7. With popcorn.
Stewart/Colbert would be the ticket to the greatest America.
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”.
Which two?
Reagan and Trump. The former was a b-list actor before becoming governor and then president and the latter played a successful businessman in the fictional series “The Apprentice”.
It’s so ironic that California and New York, two beacons of progressivism have us those two turds.
Liberalism, not progressivism. There are big and important differences.
You’re right about the rest though, of course.
There are terrible people everywhere. California and New York have 10s of millions of residents - there are bound to be some that are shitstains. The problem is that money = power and when it’s possible for one individual to have too much money, it inevitably means that terrible people will be able to amass this kind of power.
This is why wealth (in)equality is important - it’s what determines how much powerful individuals are able to become. If it’s too easy for a single person to amass too much power, inevitably, the wrong person will be able to gain it.
Ah ok, I suspected Trump would be one of them but TIL about Reagan.
Trump and Reagan
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
Zelensky’s campaign was supported by a Ukrainian oligarch. Not exactly an “absolute outsider”. In fact, during the campaign the supporters of Poroshenko (who tend to be more nationalists) used this as ground to accuse him of being associated with Russia (among other things).
What people need to understand about the Ukrainian oligarchs are that they’re actually oligarchs. It’s not US-style “we should get around to regulating campaign financing some time so that Google doesn’t run candidates”, it’s not Russia-style “Actually you’re a minor noble there to exploit your dedicated region for the Tsar, by appointment of the Tsar”:
In Ukraine it’s “businesspeople with not completely clean records running for office because that’s a neat way to get legal immunity and corruption opportunities”, aka actual oligarchy, with the fat cats themselves in office. They’re absolutely not a unified front, often hate each other’s guts both in a business and political sense, and while (at least for the longest time) the Ukrainian people had practically no say in who would run, they could choose which Oligarch they liked best, putting their thumb on the scales.
So why did Kolomoyskyi support Zelensky? There’s a very simple explanation: Zelensky ran against Poroshenko, who Kolomoyskyi had quite a fallout over stuff much more important than politics, that being funnelling oil into to Kolomoyskyi’s refineries:
On 25 March 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree dismissing Kolomoyskyi from the post of Dnipropetrovsk RSA Head, saying “Dnipropetrovsk region must remain a bastion of Ukraine in the East and protect peace”. Kolomoyskyi was replaced by Valentyn Reznichenko.[31][120][121] This followed a struggle with Poroshenko for control of the state-owned oil pipeline operator.[122] After Poroshenko’s dismissal of Oleksandr Lazorko, who was a protégé of Kolomoyskyi, as a chief executive of UkrTransNafta, Kolomoyskyi dispatched his private security guards to seize control of the company’s headquarters and expel the new government-appointed management. While Lazorko was in charge the state-owned pipelines had been delivering oil to a Kolomoyskyi-owned refinery in preference to competitors.[31][123]
In a further move against Kolomoyskyi, Poroshenko replaced Kolomoisky’s long-time business partner Ihor Palytsa as governor of neighboring Odesa Oblast with the former Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. That appointment triggered a dramatic and public war of words between Kolomoyskyi and Saakashvili. Saakashvili told journalists Kolomoyskyi was a “gangster” and “smuggler.” Kolomoyskyi told them Saakashvili was “a dog without a muzzle” and “a snotty-nosed addict.”[124]
Kolomoyskyi responded that the only difference between Poroshenko and Yanukovych is “a good education, good English and lack of a criminal record.” Everything else is the same: “It’s the same blood, the same flesh reincarnated. If Yanukovych was a lumpen dictator, Poroshenko is the educated usurper, slave to his absolute power, craven to absolute power.”[125]
Enemy of my enemy and all that.
I can’t really tell just how important access to Kolomoyskyi’s TV channel was for Zelensky’s campaign, the man was a folk hero way before meaning that vanishing on TV might’ve just boosted his youtube channel in equal amount.
I mean, don’t you member doctor house? An actor could earn more than a doctor by pretending to be a doctor. Why can’t an actor lead a country better than a politician?
Politicians are actors of politics in a way. Reagan is the oft-cited example of a total himbo politician who acted a cultural identity people associated with.
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
Yeah that’s an issue but I think it’s also from it being nearly impossible for new people to win against incumbents so we do need to also have a setup where it’s possible to run and win without already expecting it.
The system incentivizes it.
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.
lol honestly my middle manager boss makes more than him while he’s running one of the most stressful jobs in the world.
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.
Especially taking in consideration how cheap it all is
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.
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more.
I just see a lot of people putting him on a pedestal that are probably gonna be let down some day.
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)
Nobody really cares about that part though.
Bring the leader of a country during WW2 happens to be a great excuse for alcoholism
True enough.
Yeah we are? Most normal people don’t have huge skeletons in their closet.
But almost everyone has at least one skeleton.
I don’t have any…? Most people don’t I would think.
I agree regarding closet, but I believe most people have a skeleton inside their meatbag.
Yeah I’m far too boring to have dark secrets. But I feel like people in the public eye are probably more prone to them.
Some have two or more, but in nearly all cases, they’re women. Makes u think
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.
Yeah alright, again, same could be said about anyone.
Which would be meaningless for nearly anyone that’s not in a position of power and influence, yes.
I’m really not sure what your point is here.
Zelenskiy for World President
I hope they make statues of him like they did with all those bygone fellas that did something great
I’ve been disturbed to see an increasing number of purple parroting character assassination points about Zelenskiy.
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.
Isn’t he just generally a Zionist? Like even before this war.
You don’t want Israel to exist? And, yes, Zelenskiy was born Jewish. I’m sure he supports the existence of a Jewish state, aka a Zionist.
Who’d want an ethnostate to exist? I mean other than *-supremacists.
There’s a difference between having a state in which an ethnicity can feel at home and safe, and ethnically purifying that state.
Labour Zionism is the former, Religious Zionism the latter.
What would you think about the whole Israel project if it would look, policy-wise, just like what the YPG built in Rojava? If Kurds can do it and we applaud when they do it, why not Jews?
Because they hate Jews. Just using Zionism as a cover for it
Most middle east Arab states are religious ethnostates too. By your logic they should not exist either. Israel is home to Jews that were kicked out of all Arab states
Setting aside that Israel is fundamentally an Apartheid state (that’s kinda the sales pitch when you say “Jewish state”) and therefore shouldn’t exist, that’s not what I’m talking about. He’s been pretty loud about his support for Israel’s war when he could’ve just stayed silent.
Why don’t you look at Israels demographic before calling it an apartheid? By that definition most middle east countries are apartheid
I’m… Not sure what you’re even trying to say. Israel’s sales pitch is a state where Jews are superior to none-Jews. That assumption is in every fabric of Israeli society. By your definition South Africa wouldn’t have been Apartheid because they had black people.
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.
What?
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.
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.
Only if you think Palestinians have no right to resist Israeli occupation. Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and Russia is attempting to commit genocide in Ukraine (or at least parts of it).
Resisting is probably fine but doing large scale terrorist attacks against civilians and blindly firing rockets into Isreali territory is unhinged and in no way justified.
Firing rockets into Israel is one of the few ways they can actually do something. It’s what stopped people in Sheikh Jarrah from getting evicted in 2021 if you remember that. And while many atrocities were committed on October 7th, we can’t ignore the fact that it had clear military targets and goals. Or the fact that the IDF killed an unknown but significant number of their own citizens during their response to the attack. Your interpretation of the events of October 7th seems like it’s based on early reporting of the attack; we know a lot more know and it wasn’t as one-sided as Israel wants you to think.
That something that they’re doing is currently getting a lot of their civilians killed while not really archiveing any tangible military goals. I think I remember the incident you are referencing and even if I trust your statement that it stopped the evictions, “terrorism worked in the past, therefore terrorism is justified” strikes me as a very weak argument. You’d probably complain if I said that Isreal going ballistic against its enemies worked for them in the past, therefore an ethnic cleansing of Gaza is A-OK, right?
We now know a lot more details about how bad the terrorist attacks really are and that they justify dismantling Hamas. Even the surrounding Arab nations hate them and want them gone, so no recognized powers (except Iran, maybe?) are doing anything about Isreals actions. If you referring to the memes about Isreal killing their own civillians that were uncritically amplified by western media then too bad, most of these claims were made up.
Btw I don’t really look too much at any of the involved parties in any conflict when it comes to getting the facts straight, they’re good for corroberation at best.
Read your username. Why would this matter at all?
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)….?
Ey mate, shitters clogged
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.
And in Czech it would be Zelenský.
Diacritics: the bread and butter of the Slavic languages.
Slavs are pretty fucked. My fav is a name Артём that defies any hope for a consistent translation.
Artyom?
Due to Ё being randomly changed into Е in some formal documents, both Artyom and Artem are seemingly valid transcliterations, and this Ё can be written in many ways, all of them far from original spelling.
My source of credibility is that I’ve studied linguistics and translation/interpreting and got a BA on the matter, so I’m not talking out of my ass entirely.
Get ready for some dorky read.
Artyom is pretty much the expected translation, regardless of the original spelling: like with Sapkowski becoming Сапковский in Russian, which may not be what the original pronunciation or spelling intended, but that’s fine, because it’s intended to be used in a different language.
If you want to follow the spelling example, then every language is fucked because King George is very far from the Russian equivalent of Король Георг, let alone the fact that individual vowels and consonants and then their combinations are all, in fact, different sounds between languages. None of it means a translation isn’t accurate or right - it’s about ideas and legibility, comprehension achieved with the means of a target language first and foremost, no matter the limitations or differences of the source language.
Back to Artyom, regardless of the spelling I Russian, either Артём or Артем, you pronounce it the same, so it makes most sense to spell it as Artyom in English.
@[email protected] said languages should translate words phonetically, but that’s far from practical or comprehensive in general - but it has applications in proper names, and even then there are exceptions to handle stylistic or purely linguistic aspects.
And none of that is strictly a solely Slavic problem. It’s not even a problem, actually.
It’s indeed a problem when you get international documents where you are sometimes written as Artem or Artyom, and you are just Art’om. If you don’t insist on one translation, you’d get many problems with documents not being consistent.
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As someone who is learning Japanese all languages should translate words phonetically
The problem is that English has few phonetic rules. It’s a huge mess
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”
Same in the British attempt (which… with a lot of different accents doesn’t make much sense either).
If yer Scruffy, yuh pronounces it ‘terlet.’
The dingo ate my baby!
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.
The best part about standardization is picking the one you want to use the most.
If you were to write a word like 🚽
Average Kanji enjoyer.
I thought this thumbnail was showing his legs behind his ears lmao
I thought it was him holding his legs up with left hand to show us his butt.
So who is getting rich of this war? Whatever is left of Ukraine after this is over is basically going to be owned by the EU and US.
Unbelievable that there are people who believe in this bunch of shit
