Do 190,000 Ukrainian pensioners in the Czech Republic receive any kind of pension or retirement benefits? No, that's not true: According to the Czech authorities, only a few Ukrainians fled their homeland after the Russian invasion and received a pension in the Czech Republic.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on October 13, 2024. The video contains a Czech text overlay translated by Lead Stories staff as:
Daily News.
190,000 pensioners from Ukraine receive basic old-age security here!
It is a betrayal of citizens and taxpayers.
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Nov 7 09:06:01 2024 UTC)
Of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who came to the country after the Russian invasion in 2022, seven individuals received an old-age pension as of December 31, 2023, Czech Labor Ministry spokesman Jakub Augusta (archived here) wrote in an email to Lead Stories on October 31, 2024. Seven people received a disability pension, and four received a sole survivor's pension. Augusta wrote that the average amount of old-age pension contributions for these Ukrainians was 3,544 Czech korunas a month, as the amount is determined by the time a person was employed in the country.
For comparison, the average Czech age pension is expected to reach 21,078 Czech korunas at the beginning of 2025 (archived here).
The Ukrainian side also pays old-age pension contributions for some of its citizens living in the Czech Republic. Still, the amount paid by the Ukrainian side is usually meager and significantly lower than the Czech amount. In addition to pension benefits, Ukrainian refugees are also entitled to health insurance if employed, Augusta said in a phone call on November 8, 2024.
In general, to be entitled to a Czech old-age pension, Ukrainians, like other foreigners (archived here) living in the Czech Republic, must have reached retirement age under Czech law and have been insured in the Czech Republic for at least one year (archived here). Together with the period of insurance acquired on the territory of Ukraine, they must also meet the general condition of the required period of insurance for receiving a Czech pension - i.e., 35 years, including substitute periods, for example, when on maternity or parental leave, or 30 years for which insurance premiums have been paid. The Ukrainian side must confirm the period of insurance acquired in Ukraine.
Ukrainian refugees are also entitled to a humanitarian benefit (archived here), which is paid at the Czech minimum subsistence level for the first 150 days, after which it is reduced in cases where the person does not try to secure financial resources on their initiative and at the same time has no objective obstacles to work (i.e., they are not a so-called vulnerable person).
According to the data published by UNHCR (archived here), there were 6,191,800 Ukrainian refugees in Europe in mid-October 2024. The Czech Republic had 380,375 of those as of October 6, 2024, according to the table published by UNHCR.
