The war threatens Ukraine with a demographic collapse, as millions of people have left the country over the past nearly five years, and the birth rate is now less than half of what is needed to maintain a stable population. This is reported in an article by the British publication The Economist.
The publication reports that since the start of the full-scale invasion by the aggressor country, russia, Ukraine’s population has fallen from approximately 37 million to 27–28 million people. Another 3 million Ukrainians remain in the occupied territories. Thousands of civilians have been killed as a result of combat operations and shelling, and the russians have deported 20,000 children with the aim of russifying them.
Wartime conditions are also not conducive to starting families. In 2020, Ukraine’s fertility rate was 1.2 children per woman. This figure has fallen to 0.8–0.9 children per woman, which is lower than in any other major country except South Korea. To maintain a stable population, this rate must be 2.1 children per woman. At the same time, in the first half of 2026 alone, the number of deaths exceeded the number of births by more than three times.
The birth rate in Ukraine has been declining throughout its history since gaining independence in 1991, when the population stood at about 52 million. After 2022, this gap turned into a chasm.
The Economist reports that the largest population decline is due to the mass exodus of refugees. More than 5 million Ukrainians live abroad, primarily in Europe. Russian attacks on critical infrastructure this winter could prompt thousands more to leave.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the longer the war lasts, the fewer refugees express an intention to return home. According to the Kyiv-based Center for Economic Strategy, this proportion has fallen from 74% at the end of 2022 to 43%. Most refugees are children and women under the age of 44, which only exacerbates the losses for the country.
In Ukraine itself, mobilization, combat-related casualties, and uncertainty are leading to a decline in the pool of potential fathers and mothers.
Exempting men under the age of 25 from conscription was intended to mitigate the effects of the demographic decline. However, hundreds of thousands of young men have left the country. In August 2025, this exemption was extended to men under the age of 23. Many of those who remained have no intention of starting a family.
Olha Dukhnich of the Frontier Institute think tank said that the latest forecasts indicate the rate of population decline will slow only if the war ends within a few years.
At the same time, she cautioned against hoping for a postwar “baby boom,” since the generation born in the 1990s and 2000s is the smallest in Ukraine’s recent history.
As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, on October 22, Ella Libanova, director of the Institute of Demography at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, stated that as of mid-2026, Ukraine’s population stood at 28.5 million people.
As a reminder, in November 2025, Forbes Ukraine reported, citing its own analysis, that 30.5 million people lived in the government-controlled part of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Dmytro Lubinets, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, stated that approximately 11 million people had left Ukraine due to the full-scale war.
© 2026 Ukrainian News Agency
Glory to Zelensky! Real estate means more to him than Ukrainian lives. Maybe he will build his turkish-sponsored hotel in crimea soon…