Loses more than a million citizens every year: Ukraine is setting demographic anti-records

On average, Ukraine is losing more than one million people per year during the war.

This was reported by the Mikhail Ptukha Institute for Demography and Quality of Life Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

As the institute’s Deputy Director for Research, Oleksandr Hladun, explained, over four years of the full-scale war Ukraine has averaged 185,000 births per year, while annual deaths averaged 505,000.

“If we average all the data on recorded migration across Ukraine’s western border, the annual decline will be about 830,000 due to migration. So, from these two factors, we get an annual population decrease of roughly 1,150,000,” the expert said.

The demographer notes that it is difficult to determine the exact scale of population loss, because several factors affect the calculation. First, the Ministry of Justice registers births and deaths only in territories controlled by Ukraine, and the boundaries of those territories have changed over the past four years. Second, it is unknown how many people left in 2022 during the full-scale invasion, how many departures were not properly documented at the time, and some may have left illegally. In addition, part of the population left via the territory of Russia to third countries, which also was not recorded. Third, some people remain in occupied territories.

In conclusion, the expert said, the trend of Ukraine’s population decline has continued since 1993 and persists to this day, and the full-scale war has only accelerated this process.