In 2026, 200 thousand people may leave Ukraine – the demographic situation in Ukraine is heavy

The demographic situation in Ukraine is difficult.

This was stated by Member of Parliament Danylo Hetmantsev on his Telegram channel.

According to Hetmantsev, migration sentiment among the population is increasing. He writes that, according to a forecast by the National Bank of Ukraine, about 200,000 citizens could leave the country in 2026.

On December 29, 2025, Oleksii Antypovych, head of the Ukrainian sociological group “Rating,” said that Ukraine would face a demographic crisis and a serious labor shortage if citizens who left the country after 2022 do not return home.

On January 26, Social Policy Minister Denys Uliutin said that Ukraine is in a deep demographic crisis and that the ratio of working people to pensioners has approached 1:1. He explained that the results of the latest study by the International Labour Organization showed a “very unpleasant for the country” demographic trend, according to which in the next cycle in Ukraine “there will be more working people than pensioners.”

Uliutin also said that more than 5.8 million people have left Ukraine since 2022.

Recall that in December 2025, the deputy director of the Institute of Demography under the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Ukraine, Oleksandr Hladun, predicted the emergence of large uninhabited zones in Ukraine. This concerns not only areas located near the front line. Hladun noted that in the Sumy and Chernihiv regions, which border Russia, the process of villages dying out began long before the armed conflict that flared up in 2022.

The specialist emphasized that over the past four years the outflow of population from these regions has accelerated, and living conditions there will remain difficult even if hostilities cease. Ukraine has been predicted to see the emergence of uninhabited zones.