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New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. is asking the Russian and Ukrainian Ambassadors and the Russian Counsel in New York City to help ensure that the residents of former soviet republics receive their pensions.

“These former citizens of the Society Union have not received the pensions they earned during years of work,” Thompson said in letters to the Ambassadors and the Russian Counsel this week. “Let me emphasize that the people involved here are not asking for charity, but are merely asking for the money that they have earned with their own labor.”

Comptroller Thompson sent letters to the Ambassadors and Russian Counsel this week, and requested a meeting with members of the Russian Consulate in New York City.

“The governments of the Russian Federation and the United States can work together to correct this injustice and ensure that pensions earned by former residents of Russia are made available to them,” Thompson said. “I am hopeful that your government will recognize the validity of these claims and provide former citizens now living abroad with the pension payments they have earned.”

Currently, there are tens of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union living throughout the world – and in New York City - who have been refused their pensions; many of them had fought for the Soviet Republic in World War II.

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