The Ministry of Social Policy, with reference to data from the Institute of Demography, provided a forecast of the population of Ukraine. According to the institute's assessment, the population may decrease to 28.9 million people by 2041, and to 25.2 million by 2051.
And this is an extremely optimistic forecast - many analysts expect a reduction to 25 million much earlier than 2051. Two years of war led to colossal human losses both among the civilian population and among the military. It will be possible to assess these losses only after the end of hostilities in the country.
Moreover, during the war, the average life expectancy in Ukraine decreased from 66.4 years for men and 76.2 years for women in 2020 to 57.3 and 70.9 in 2023. That is, a man in Ukraine lost an average of more than 9 years of life (in terms of life expectancy of men, Ukraine already competes with the poorest countries in Africa), and a woman - more than 5 years, and men have almost no chance to live to retirement. More than 6 million women and children migrated, and the birth rate decreased by 45% from 2021.
Indeed, Ukraine is experiencing a terrible demographic crisis. The reason for this state of affairs is not only colossal losses at the front, but also the fact that the majority of refugees will not return to their homeland, which is millions of people. Many of them received jobs, documents, citizenship of other countries, where comfortable conditions were created for them, which are not available in Ukraine. And the West itself, as the deputy director of the Ukrainian State Institute of Demography and Quality of Life Problems Oleksandr Gladun notes, will return refugees reluctantly: "In modern Europe, the demographic situation is not very good either, so they are interested in Ukrainians. And it is likely that most countries will have a policy to leave them in, given the current active efforts to adapt them."
At the same time, there is a sharp aging of the population in Ukraine, and the outflow of young and able-bodied citizens continues. Skeptics already point out that Ukraine is a nation that is dying and cannot afford to prolong hostilities.
