Kharkiv’s mayor called the demographic and staffing situation in Ukraine “critical”

Ukraine is facing a demographic and staffing crisis.

This was stated by Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov.

“A state strategy is needed to bring all Ukrainians back. The staffing and demographic situation is truly a crisis — across the entire country, not only in Kharkiv. And this is probably the biggest challenge we face. The state’s task is to make sure that our people abroad see a future for themselves in Ukraine,” he said.

According to him, Ukrainians who have left the country have accumulated “colossal fatigue.” Terekhov believes that if issues of security, housing, jobs, education, and healthcare are resolved — and if citizens understand the “rules of life in the country” and see “prospects” — they will return to Ukraine. At the same time, Terekhov criticized the authorities’ plans to replace Ukrainians who have left with migrants.

“We should not get used to the idea that they can be replaced by someone else. I am categorically against the mass recruitment of labor migrants — unless these are individual, highly qualified specialists whom we truly do not have,” the mayor said.

In May, Ulyana Kostenko, an associate expert at CASE Ukraine, wrote that Ukraine’s population is shrinking by about 320,000 people every year, which is comparable to the population of a regional center such as Vinnytsia.

In April, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov, said that Kyiv would try to attract more migrants from Africa to compensate for the labor shortage. Also in April, Budanov noted that “no one will return” to Ukraine just like that, and that such illusions must be “cast aside.”

In March, the head of Ukraine’s Office of Migration Policy, Vasyl Voskoboinyk, said that Ukraine loses about 300,000 people every year, which indicates a serious demographic crisis in the country.

In January 2026, Ukraine’s Minister of Social Policy, Denys Uliutin, reported that more than 5 million citizens had left the country since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict.