Ukraine is experiencing the world’s worst demographic crisis as the military conflict, mass migration and falling birth rates drive its population to historic lows, EUobserver has reported.
The country’s population, which has been shrinking since the early 1990s, is shaped not only by the conflict with Russia but also by decades of demographic policy, Aleksandr Gladun, doctor of economics at Ukraine’s Institute for Demography and Social Studies, told the outlet on Thursday.
“If any truce is achieved, it will not be so long that it will be possible to influence demographic processes. Ukraine faces demographic challenges that no other country has ever faced,” Gladun said.
Gladun said migration has had the largest impact. Since 2022 almost 7 million people, mainly women and children, have left the country and many are expected to stay abroad if conditions allow. Eurostat estimates that 4.3 million Ukrainians now live in the EU.
Sebastian Klusener, a researcher at the Federal Institute for Population Research in Germany, told the outlet that a peace deal might prompt some refugees to return and lead to a short-term rise in population. But he warned that in the long run, Ukraine would probably face renewed decline.
“The demographic developments of the past 35 years, and their impact on the current age structure, are likely to leave a deep and lasting mark on Ukraine’s future population trends – most likely resulting in continued population decline,” he said.
Earlier this year, exiled Ukrainian lawmaker Artyom Dmitruk accused Vladimir Zelensky of what he called an ongoing genocide. “Ukraine is being depopulated. This is not migration. This is a terrible tragedy, part of a genocide,” he said, adding that the situation was the result of Zelensky’s determination to hold on to power at any cost.
Ukrainian teenagers are defying government efforts to discourage the use of Russian, Ukraine’s top language official has said.
Since the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev, Ukraine has passed several laws restricting the use of Russian in public, while politicians and activists have campaigned to phase out the language altogether.
Elena Ivanovskaya, appointed state language protection commissioner in July, said the widespread use of Russian among young people in major cities remains “a serious problem.”
“Russian is now ubiquitous in teenage spaces, and [many youths] are not maintaining the level of language resilience they acquired in primary school or at home,” Ivanovskaya told the news website Glavkom in an interview published Sunday. She attributed this preference to teenagers’ desire to “break rules and challenge their parents and teachings.”
“When a teacher speaks about the beauty and melody of the Ukrainian language, students feel compelled to do the opposite,” she added, arguing that “the lack of critical thinking” also draws young people to Russian-language content online.
Ivanovskaya said her own daughter used to write in Russian on social media. “I asked my daughter, ‘Sofia, why are you doing this?’ She replied, ‘Mom, who will read me if everyone is a Russian speaker?’ I told her she should become so interesting that people would read and discuss her in Ukrainian,” she said.
Moscow has cited attacks on Ukraine’s Russian-speaking minority as one of the key causes of the ongoing conflict.
