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.

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.

  • @noobdoomguy8658@feddit.deEnglish
    18•5 months ago

    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.