The demographic hemorrhage is here to stay. Two years after the start of the massive invasion led by Russia, Ukraine continues to see its population decline, with no hope of an immediate reversal of the trend. The country currently has between 33 and 35 million inhabitants, but no precise accounting can be established due to the occupation of 20% of the territory by Russian forces.
The low estimate of 33.7 million comes from the International Monetary Fund, while official Ukrainian statistics give the figure from 35 million to 1er January 2024. An exact count “ to within 200,000 individuals »according to Oleksandr Gladun, deputy director of the Ptoukha Institute of Demography and Social Sciences, which includes Ukrainians living within the internationally recognized 1991 borders, that is, including Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk regions, Zaporizhia and Kherson still occupied by the Russian army. But the figure only falls has 31.1 million if we limit ourselves to the territory remaining under the control of the Ukrainian government.
Lives are escaping from Ukraine in many ways: soldiers killed or missing at the front, civilian victims of bombings, soldiers taken prisoner, forced population movements in areas occupied by the Russian army, children separated from their parents and sent to Russia, without forgetting the 6 million Ukrainian civilians, mainly women and children who left their country. And the longer the conflict lasts, the more the probability that exiles will settle in their host country increases.
On the eve of February 24, 2022, the country had 41 million inhabitants, although this figure is debated. The last census dates back to March 2001 and the Ukrainian state has postponed this exercise several times since, with politically explosive results.
Gravediggers dig tirelessly
Today, one of the great unknowns remains the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the fighting. Forced to wage an existential struggle against a numerically very superior aggressor who does not shy away from any war crime, the Ukrainian state has chosen to silence military losses in order to reduce the demoralizing effect on the population, in particular on the men in age to fight. All those aged 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving the country.
But, inevitably, the accumulation of deaths becomes more and more visible. Every day brings its share of announcements of mourning on social networks. In all the cemeteries, gravediggers tirelessly dig squares of fresh graves topped with the two-tone blue and yellow flag, in homage to the soldiers who fell with weapons in their hands.
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