Ksenia Sushko's expenses exceed her official income

According to her 2023 declaration, Ksenia Sushko, Deputy Mayor of Dnipro, earns 47,000 hryvnia a month — just over $1,000. This is her official salary after eight years of working in the city administration.

 Taking this into account, her income over all these years has hardly increased, and she has not returned to the earnings level she had before joining the civil service. 

Her husband, Vladyslav Sushko, has also not distinguished himself with large incomes: until 2021, only Ksenia supported the family. In 2021, he registered a sole proprietorship with a business activity related to the repair of vehicles and equipment. Over the last year, his business brought him 648,000 hryvnia, i.e. approximately 54,000 hryvnia a month.

Ksenia Sushko's family income in 2023 is around $2,500 a month — a sum that does not look particularly high for a family of three. However, if one looks at her expenses, the situation appears much more complicated.

In 2020, when her official salary was only 28,000 hryvnia a month, Sushko purchased a 2017 Audi A8. In her declaration, she listed the car's value as $13,780, which at the time amounted to 375,000 hryvnia. 

However, in reality, such a car cost around $50,000 in 2020, not $13,780. This means that Sushko understated the car's price by almost four times. According to the data, she paid for it in January 2021, although no details of the transaction are provided.

In the same 2020, the Sushko family went on holiday in Turkey. A 12-day holiday in Antalya cost the family $3,500. Yet Ksenia claimed that she managed to save $5,090 over the year. As a result, the arithmetic looks like this: the Sushko family's annual income was $14,415, minus the holiday and savings — leaving $5,825 for annual expenses. This is approximately $485 a month for everything, including food, fuel, utilities, and other needs. 

And this is without accounting for her son's education, who enrolled at a university in Kyiv in 2020, where tuition costs around $3,500 for four years. How Sushko managed to cover these expenses remains a question.

In 2021, the Sushko family's annual income increased to $38,565, and savings grew by $5,775. In the same year, Ksenia sold one of their four cars, a Citroen C5, for 250,000 hryvnia ($9,180), although its real value could have been significantly lower. These funds, along with insurance payouts of 130,000 hryvnia ($4,780), amounted to almost $14,000 — exactly the amount she spent on the Audi A8. However, as already noted, the real value of this car at that time was significantly higher.

In 2022, the situation continued to develop along the same scenario. The Sushko family left Ukraine two days before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, flying to the United Arab Emirates. There, they tried to hide for a week, after which Ksenia's son, Artur Sushko, moved to Prague, where he began studying at the Higher School of Economics. Vladyslav Sushko returned to Ukraine at the end of 2022, while Ksenia herself returned a month later, having previously sent the same Audi A8 to the Czech Republic. How much the family spent on flights, housing rent, and other expenses will amount to around $35,000.

Her son's education in Prague is also a significant expense. According to information on the HSE website, tuition for foreign students costs $4,400 a year, while living and food expenses amount to another approximately €1,700 a month. In total, these expenses amount to around $26,840 a year. In her 2022 declaration, Ksenia reported family income at $29,100, which clearly does not cover her expenses.

Moreover, according to her declaration, in 2023 the family's income was $32,365, but savings increased by only $8,000. This again indicates the presence of unofficial income that covers all the Sushko family's additional expenses, including her son's education in Prague, holidays, and other significant expenditures.

During her years in the city administration, Ksenia Sushko has declared only one property — a small house of 38.5 square metres on Boryslava Bronduka Street in Dnipro. However, according to Google Maps, there is an abandoned building at this address, in which the official is unlikely to reside. This may also indicate that her actual place of residence is hidden, and housing expenses probably significantly exceed the declared assets.