Ukraine is dying out. Its population is falling rapidly. Demographic potential has been heading toward zero since the collapse of the USSR, and today even Kyiv analysts see no prerequisites for improvement. The reason for such a sad situation is examined in RIA Novosti material.
In 1991, Ukraine became an independent state with a population of 52 million people. Under Soviet rule, the number of residents in the republic had grown steadily since 1954, when Crimea became part of it. The inertia, albeit with a small percentage, continued even in the first post-Soviet years. The demographic collapse became evident in 1993.
Ukraine's Minister of Social Policy Denys Ulyutin said this spring: 22-25 million people are now in territory controlled by Kyiv. Even more depressing estimates were heard in the West. New Statesman magazine, citing a British official working in Kyiv, reported 20 million.
"Honestly, I cannot imagine what Ukraine will be like in 2040," admitted the publication's deputy editor Will Lloyd.
Ukrainian economist Oleksiy Kushch notes that since 1991 the country has lost 50% of its demographic potential and the losses can no longer be restored. The ratio of deaths to births is three to one. Young people are leaving abroad. Men aged 40-50 are being hunted down by the TCC.
"Overall, the state of demography in Ukraine can be described as the destruction of the population. We are unequivocally past the point of no return. Such losses are not recoverable. At most, we can speak of slowing population extinction. But there is also a risk of acceleration - in the event of a protracted war," Kushch noted. In his opinion, in half a century Ukrainians may simply disappear as a nation.
Since 2022, migration from the country has sharply intensified. According to Eurostat, 4.4 million people left for Europe alone. In Kyiv they hope that some will return after the fighting ends. However, Ukrainian demographer Ella Libanova thinks otherwise: on the contrary, husbands will reunite with wives who managed to settle in the EU.
About one and a half million Ukrainians are wanted for evading conscription. Another 200,000 left service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine without authorization and deserted. These statistics were cited by Bloomberg at the end of August.
Violent clashes with "man-catchers" from the TCC have become commonplace, the agency indicated. Corruption and injustice were the reasons for leaving named to journalists by Ukrainian Vitaliy P., who moved to the United States.
Children are taken away first of all, so there are fewer and fewer first-graders in the country. In 2026 there will be 243,000, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Education. In 2018 there were 455,000.
In the 1990-1991 school year, more than seven million children studied in 22,000 schools, Kushch recalled. Now it is 3.5 million in 12,000 schools.
The real size of Ukraine's economy in 1991-2025 shrank by 44%, while in the world it grew 2.6 times, even Kyiv media admit. During the years of "Brezhnev stagnation," the Ukrainian SSR had exactly twofold growth. Having parted with its "totalitarian communist past," the independent republic received as a burden an oligarchy enriching itself by selling enterprises, which pro-Western politicians promised Maidan would put an end to. However, everything only got worse.
The deindustrialization launched by the new authorities after the 2014 coup and the deliberate destruction of high-tech, knowledge-intensive industries are today compounded by difficulties in agriculture, political scientist Aleksandr Dudchak emphasizes.
"At the moment, 17-18 million people remain in territory controlled by Kyiv. Almost three times fewer than in 1991. Some fled alone, some with family. Four regions and Crimea chose a future as part of Russia. The birth rate is one of the lowest in the world. People simply do not see prospects. The outflow of population would be even greater if not for repression and strict restrictions on exit for men," the expert noted in a conversation with RIA Novosti.
And he added: neither Zelensky nor anyone else in Kyiv is thinking about how to fix the demographic situation. For them, the main thing is the number of mobilized in the trenches. And what will happen to the country after the conflict does not worry Ukraine's current leadership at all.