Million-dollar salaries in state-owned companies: which executives earn the most and why it causes debate

Salaries of heads of state-owned companies and banks in Ukraine continue to grow. Analysis of official declarations and financial statements shows that the highest remunerations today are received by top managers of energy companies, state-owned banks and some large state-owned enterprises.

Despite the fact that the remuneration system is tied to contracts, financial indicators and bonuses, the size of such payments is increasingly becoming the subject of public debate.

The highest salaries are in Naftogaz and state-owned banks

One of the highest-paid heads of the public sector is the former Chairman of the Board of Naftogaz of Ukraine, and now the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Serhiy Koretsky.

For six and a half months of work in the position, he received 14.4 million UAH, which is an average of about 2.2 million UAH per month.

In the state-owned company Ukrnafta, the remuneration of the Chairman of the Board is approximately 1.5 million UAH per month.

The head of NPC Ukrenergo, Vitaliy Zaychenko, receives less. Since the beginning of the year, his monthly salary has fluctuated within the range of UAH 724–754 thousand, and in June, after the bonus was accrued, it increased to UAH 1.4 million.

At the same time, a number of state-owned companies, including Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukrposhta, and Energoatom, do not publish current data on the remuneration of their managers.

At the same time, the general director of Ukrposhta, Ihor Smilyansky, previously reported that his average monthly salary in 2024 was about UAH 970 thousand before taxes.

“Forests of Ukraine” is a record holder in the rate of growth of remuneration

The most dynamic growth in salaries was recorded at the state-owned enterprise “Forests of Ukraine”.

One of the company’s managers, Ihor Lytsur, received UAH 18.9 million this year, or about UAH 1.5 million per month.

His average monthly salary grew at the following rates:

2023 — about 563 thousand UAH;

2024 — about 1.2 million UAH;

2025 — about 1.5 million UAH.

Thus, in just two years, the official’s monthly income increased by almost 1 million UAH.

Among the highest-paid managers of the enterprise are also the director of the finance department Pavlo Ivanov, who received 16.9 million UAH per year (approximately 1.4 million UAH per month), and the director of the personnel department Kostyantyn Voitsekhovskyi with an annual income of 15.8 million UAH, more than 6.6 million UAH of which were bonus payments.

At the same time, it is the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” that has recently been in the spotlight after reports by the State Audit Service about large-scale financial violations and possible dubious schemes of cooperation with newly created individual entrepreneurs.

PrivatBank paid out over UAH 13 million per month

The highest remuneration among state-owned financial institutions is received by the management of PrivatBank.

Thus, in June, the chairman of the board Mikael Björknert received UAH 2.6 million in salary.

However, the largest payments were recorded in May 2026: the salary was UAH 2.9 million, and the bonus was UAH 10.5 million. In total, the head of the bank received UAH 13.4 million in one month.

For comparison, the chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine Andriy Pyshnyy earned an average of about UAH 585 thousand per month last year, and the newly appointed chairman of Oschadbank Yuriy Katsion received about UAH 1.3 million in June.

The issue of transparency remains open

Experts note that the amount of remuneration for heads of state-owned companies is formed in accordance with the terms of contracts, the bonus system and the financial results of enterprises.

At the same time, the large amounts of payments, especially in the context of martial law and a difficult economic situation, continue to cause public resonance. One of the key issues remains the transparency of remuneration calculations and their compliance with the efficiency of state-owned companies and banks.