Long Waits for Pay: Why Service Members May Be Underpaid
25 July 09:16
Problems with combat pay, salaries, and medical benefits—virtually any member of the military may face such issues at some point during their service.
Military attorney Natalia Reshetnik explained to RBC-Ukraine why financial delays occur, how much should actually be paid during medical treatment, and when to go to court, as reported by "Komersant Ukrainian".
Why are service members actually being underpaid?
There is sometimes a perception among military personnel that local commanders deliberately seek legal loopholes to reduce indexation or “cut” combat allowances. However, real-world legal practice points to entirely different roots of the problem, says the attorney.
“To effectively defend their rights, soldiers need to understand the internal mechanisms of military accounting,” explains Natalia Reshetnik.
It’s hard to say that such problems are created on purpose, the expert adds.
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In her opinion, it is more a matter of inaction and negligence, where an officer may intentionally fail to allocate certain amounts from the budget assigned to their military unit.
“After all, the money isn’t coming out of their own pockets. It’s just a case of negligence: somewhere they didn’t review the documentation thoroughly, didn’t take a document into account, simply miscounted the days, or didn’t check the schedules because the commander didn’t submit the report on the actual completion of combat missions on time,” the expert is convinced.
According to the attorney, there could be countless reasons for this—ranging all the way to a simple lack of knowledge of the legislation governing payments to military personnel, such as Ministry of Defense Order No. 260, Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 168, or other relevant regulations.
What Are the Issues with Medical Treatment Payments?
A separate pressing issue is payments during long-term or repeated medical treatment. The law (specifically Resolutions No. 168 and No. 206) clearly stipulates that during inpatient treatment following an injury, a soldier is entitled to additional compensation in the amount of 100,000 hryvnias, proportional to the number of days spent in the medical facility.
However, it sometimes happens that a soldier is discharged, yet the money for treatment is not credited the following month.
“The reasons often lie in the fact that the military unit either did not receive the hospital discharge summary on time or simply does not know that any subsequent or repeat treatment for the initial injury is paid in the exact same amount of 100,000 hryvnias, regardless of when exactly the injury occurred,” says Natalia Reshetnyk.
What about indexation?
A similar situation exists with the underreporting of mandatory indexation of financial support, where military financial officials, for unknown reasons, attempt to calculate the coefficients by linking them to the 2017–2018 subsistence minimum.
However, Natalia Reshetnik emphasizes that the Supreme Court has already settled this issue: the coefficient must be adjusted annually in accordance with the current subsistence minimum, and this ruling serves as the primary guideline for the legal protection of servicemembers.
Please note: If a unit’s financial office refuses to pay these funds voluntarily, the law allows the matter to be resolved in court.
Lawyers say that the indexation of monetary allowances is not simply a bonus, but a guaranteed payment to service members, and any violation or failure to comply with this requirement constitutes grounds for filing a lawsuit. There are many cases where service members have recovered significant amounts of underpaid indexation for past years of service through the courts.
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