Ukraine is experiencing one of the most severe demographic crises in the world, CNN reports

Ukraine is currently experiencing one of the most severe demographic crises in the world and is turning into a country of widows and orphans.

CNN reports.

Birth rates in the country have fallen sharply. More and more people are experiencing fertility problems or postponing having children. At the same time, losses on the front line are rising, and millions of refugees have settled abroad.

“This is a catastrophe. No country can exist without people. Even before the war, Ukraine’s population density was low and very unevenly distributed,” said leading Ukrainian demographer Ella Libanova.

In her estimate, Ukraine has lost around 10 million people since the start of the war, and the birth rate has virtually collapsed.

The war has also made it harder to conceive and carry a pregnancy to term, said Valerii Zukin, director of the Nadiya reproductive medicine clinic.

“We are seeing more complications, more abnormalities, and more difficulty carrying pregnancies to term,” he noted.

Clinic staff member Alla Baranenko added that she has observed an increase in cases of premature menopause among young women.

“Egg quality has worsened and the number of eggs is decreasing—because of stress. And this applies not only to my patients but also to egg donors, meaning women without any reproductive problems. And yet the quality of their eggs is worse,” she said.

Baranenko also reported that the quality of Ukrainian men’s sperm has worsened as well, especially among those who have returned from the front.

Recently, Roman Catholic Bishop Vitalii Kryvytskyi said: “Why do we need this war if in 15 years there will be no one to pay taxes into the pension fund, because we won’t have people?”