Naftogaz Ukrainy CEO Andriy Kobolev has said that he had decided to donate all his salary and other income to three charitable funds until the end of the current calendar year.

"My salary, unfortunately, has become a political issue, everyone is footballing it. Elections, the issue is interesting, not many people in Ukraine earn a big salary. This is a very popular story. It is used for political purposes. And this pressure that the government also feels, led to the fact that it attempted to intervene not in its powers, because according to the law on joint stock companies, approval of my salary and the conditions of my contract is the exclusive powers of the supervisory board [of Naftogaz Ukrainy]. To remove these prospects from the political arena, I made a decision from February of this year until the end of this calendar year, that is, until the end of the political process, I will transfer all my income to charitable needs," Kobolev said on the ICTV TV channel on Monday evening.

He said that this will be his income in the form of salary, bonuses, surcharges – everything that he receives at Naftogaz Ukrainy will be fully donated to three charitable organizations: Home Front in support of the families of the dead soldiers, Save Life in support of the Armed Forces and Tabletochki to help children with cancer. Kobolev also said that he will report on this every month.

"I really hope that my decision will remove the politicization and tension around this issue, because it is not about my salary, but it is actually about canceling the entire corporate reform. The entire country and the parliament decided to transfer the authority to set all remuneration terms and other conditions for heads of state-owned companies to supervisory boards, without exception. And this reform needs to be retained. Its cancellation will be catastrophic, negative for the budget, for the country and for the success of such things as the Stockholm arbitration," Kobolev said.

He expressed the hope that after his decision, the political pressure that forces the prime minister to react to the criticism of high salaries in Naftogaz will disappear.