Legal assistance in obtaining a pension: a story of Maria from Crimea

Maria moved from the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in 2022 and faced a problem – her pension payments were suspended. For several years, she tried to restore her pension on her own, but without success.  

The Pension Fund office in Crimea granted the woman a pension and issued her with a corresponding certificate in 2011. Maria applied to the Pension Fund office in the Kharkiv Oblast to have her payments resumed, but her application was rejected. The reason given was that the issue of resuming pension payments to internally displaced people from the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was not regulated at the legislative level. It also turned out that Maria's pension file was not available to the pension authority. Another reason for the refusal was errors in the personal data in her employment record book, which cast doubt on whether the document belonged to Maria.  

Maria sought legal assistance from Serhii, a lawyer with Caritas Kharkiv, which cooperates with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC). The lawyer took a comprehensive approach to resolving the issue and helped the woman establish the fact of ownership of the employment record book in court.  

Understanding the difficult financial situation of an elderly person who was unable to work and had been deprived of any means of subsistence, the lawyer helped Maria to apply for temporary state social assistance.  

After receiving the court decision establishing the ownership of the employment record book, the lawyer helped her reapply to the PFU, strengthening the appeal with changes in legislation regarding the resumption of pension payments to internally displaced persons from Crimea and the case law of the Supreme Court of Ukraine in a similar case.  

Thanks to financial support from the European Union, which made it possible to provide Maria with free legal assistance, she received her long-awaited pension in July 2025.  

The charity organisation Caritas Kharkiv provides free legal aid to people affected by the war in cooperation with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) thanks to financial support from the European Union.

* Name changed to protect personal data.