Highest and Lowest Paid Presidents of Post-Soviet States

During the world pandemic, the presidents of various countries started actively transferring their salaries to the funds set up to fight COVID-19. Forbes Georgia made a search for the monthly wages of the heads of the countries and exposed the highest and the lowest salaried presidents of post-Soviet states.

With US$ 11,495.96 monthly wage, president of Lithuania topped the list of top-paying presidents of the post-Soviet states. With a salary of almost seventeen times less than of Lithuanian president’s, the President of Kyrgyzstan is at the bottom of the list.

Salaries are expressed in U.S. dollars that were converted from country of origin currencies as of September 14, 2020. We gathered information from different websites, as well as data from organization such as the World Bank. Leaders of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan were excluded from our list due to a lack of consistent available data.

We share the list of monthly salaries of the presidents of twelve post-Soviet states and the country’s GDP per capita. Among the countries on this list, the leaders’ annual salaries are well above the country’s GDP per capita.

1. Gitanas Nausėda

• 9^th President of Lithuania
• Monthly salary (in US$): 11,495.96
• GDP per capita (in US$): 19,455.5.

2. Vladimir Putin

• 4^th President of the Russian Federation
• Monthly salary (in US$): 10,348.09
• GDP per capita (in US$): 11,585.0

3. Ilham Aliyev

• 4^th President of the Republic of Azerbaijan
• Monthly salary (in US$): 8,823.53
• GDP per capita (in US$): 4,793.6 

4. Kersti Kaljulaid 

• 5^th President of Estonia
• Monthly salary (in US$): 7,921.28
• GDP per capita (in US$): 23,659.9 

5. Egils Levits 

• 10^th President of Latvia
• Monthly salary (in US$): 7,062.75
• GDP per capita (in US$): 17,836.4 

6. Alexander Lukashenko

• 1^st President of Belarus
• Monthly salary (in US$): 3,752.56
• GDP per capita (in US$): 6,663.3

7. Salome Zourabishvili

• 5^th President of Georgia
• Monthly salary (in US$): 2,222
• GDP per capita (in US$): 4,769.2

8. Armen Sarkissian

• 4^th President of the Republic of Armenia
• Monthly salary (in US$): 2,118.26
• GDP per capita (in US$): 4,622.7

9. Emomali Rahmon

• 3^rd President of the Republic of Tajikistan
• Monthly salary (in US$): 1,100
• GDP per capita (in US$): 8

10. Volodymyr Zelensky

• 6^th President of Ukraine
• Monthly salary (in US$): 1,000.28
• GDP per capita (in US$): 3,659.0.

11. Igor Dodon 

• 5^th President of the Republic of Moldova
• Monthly salary (in US$): 781.25
• GDP per capita (in US$): 4,498.5

12. Sooronbay Jeenbekov

• 5^th President of the Kyrgyz Republic
• Monthly salary (in US$): 670.67 
• GDP per capita (in US$): 1,309.4.