Do you know how much Ukrainian officials responsible for protecting the country's environment are paid?
EcoPolitic looked into the pockets of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine and checked who and what millions from the budget go to. We also asked whether anything fundamental has changed in the structure of the agency and the number of its employees under Svitlana Hrynchuk's leadership.
EcoPolitic received the Ministry's staffing lists for 2024 and 2025 to tell our readers how much money from the state budget is spent on salaries of the Ministry's officials, how many of them there are in total, and what they do.
What's in the budget
The total payroll increased by UAH 247,214 – from UAH 7,738,984 in 2024 to UAH 7,986,198 in 2025. That is, in 2024, the state spent almost UAH 93 million on salaries of officials in the Ministry of Environment alone.
For your convenience, we have compiled a comparative table of the main positions in the Ministry.
Salaries of the Ministry of Environment officials in 2024 and 2025
As we can see, the salary in 2025 increased only for the Minister and her deputies. Other officials of the Ministry remained unchanged. It should be reminded that we are talking here only about salaries, and civil servants have a number of allowances and bonuses that may be equal to or even exceed the salary.
What about the staff
The number of staff units in the Ministry has not changed over the year – now there are 241. But there have been some changes within the services and departments of the Ministry of Ecology:
- The Department for Supporting the Minister's Activities (Patronage Service) has one less advisor to the Minister – now there are 6 instead of 7.
- The department dealing with digitalization has been transformed into a directorate, as it has only two divisions: the Digital Transformation and Digitalization Development Department and the Cybersecurity Department. Some units of this department have gone into oblivion: the division for electronic public services and deregulation, the division for waste management policy (what was it doing in this department anyway?), the sector for waste management and interaction with local governments, and the sector for electronic registers.
- One staff member was added to the legal department – a chief specialist legal adviser, but the names of the departments have changed radically.
- If the Ministry of Environment in 2024 had only a few specialists in different departments dealing with waste management, in 2025 we have a whole department of 17 people who are responsible for shaping state policy in this area, as well as for licensing. Apparently, reforming an entire industry with only a few people from different departments was not very effective.
- Svitlana Hrynchuk divided the department that under Strilets was responsible for both industrial pollution prevention and climate policy into two separate departments without changing the number of employees – 24 in total.
- The Department of Environmental Safety has grown solely due to the inclusion of the Department for Policy Formulation in the Field of Radioactive Waste Management and Forest Resources Protection, which was previously subordinated to the Department of Balanced Environmental Management.
- The department responsible for European integration underwent a transformation: the names of its departments were completely changed – they became more powerful (apparently to increase their efficiency), the protocol and event organization sector disappeared from its structure, and the number of staff members decreased from 21 to 17.
What about the departments?
We can say right away that the change in the Ministry's priorities has affected its structure. But we'll see if this will have a positive impact on the efficiency of the work.
Currently, the Ministry has 5 departments, 10 offices, 7 sectors and 2 separate divisions. Within each of the departments and directorates, there are also divisions that deal with specific areas. In the infographic, we have shown a list of these divisions of the Ministry of Ecology and the number of staff units envisaged for 2025 for each of them.
Earlier, EcoPolitic told you how much the Minister of Environmental Protection Svitlana Hrynchuk earned in this position in 2024. We wrote about the salaries of her deputies and the areas they are responsible for in this article.
We also reported that Oleh Bondarenko, the head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management, indicated in his 2024 declaration 80 bitcoins (BTC), which as of April 1 is equal to UAH 279.4 million.
As a reminder, on April 15, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine appointed Yegor Perelyhin as a new deputy to Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk.
