He meant to call for higher military pay but accidentally called for a raise for MPs instead. Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak delivered one of the most amusing moments of the country’s 2027 budget debate.
On October 28, during a parliamentary discussion on increasing payments to Ukrainian service members, an unexpected slip of the tongue turned a serious budget debate into an unintentional comedy moment.
Yaroslav Zhelezniak, an MP from the Holos party, declared:
“Increasing salaries for members of parliament is the position of the entire parliament.”
Well, there it is! At last, something that supposedly unites every Ukrainian lawmaker. Not taxes, not pensions, not even defense spending — but their own salaries!
Fortunately, Zhelezniak quickly realized his mistake and apologized.
What he actually meant was that parliament supported increasing pay for Ukrainian military personnel, not its own members.
But the words had already been spoken — from the parliamentary podium, no less.
Was it simply exhaustion after hours of budget negotiations? Or a textbook Freudian slip?
Sigmund Freud might have had plenty to say about that one.
In any case, the incident provided a rare moment of comic relief during a serious political debate.
For clarity: Zhelezniak did not formally propose raising MPs’ salaries. The remark was an accidental slip during a discussion about military compensation.
