/Pogled.info/ The population of Ukraine continues to rapidly decrease. The low birth rate situation worsened after millions of people left the country with the advent of SVO. If in 1991 the population was 52 million people, now it is 29 million. However, this figure, according to experts, is extremely optimistic.
According to estimates by the Ukrainian Institute for the Future (UIB), after the beginning of the Russian special operation, the population of the country has decreased from 37.6 to 29 million people. Since February last year, more than 20 million people have left the country, of which 8.6 million Ukrainians have never returned to their homeland. At the same time, no more than 9.5 million Ukrainians work out of 29.
According to the UIB estimates, about 6-7 million people remain, excluding civil servants. “They are the team” that carries the rest, including retirees, children, students, the unemployed and dependents. Analysts explained that if the situation does not change, then in the next few years, pensioners in Ukraine will be twice as many as working people.
Ella Libanova, an academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, recently said that 2023 will be the year of a catastrophic decline in the birth rate in Ukraine. According to her forecast, by 2030, the country’s population will decrease to 35 million. Population growth requires the average woman to give birth to “2.13-2.15 children” in her lifetime, but in 2021 this figure was at the level of 1.1, in 2022 – “even less”.
Thus, the birth rate in Ukraine fell below unity. According to the State Statistical Service of Ukraine, the country’s population as of July 1, 2021 is 41.3 million people. As the local media wrote, after gaining independence, Ukraine lost 20% of its population. In 1991, it was about 52 million people. According to the All-Ukrainian population census of 2001, about 48 million people lived in the country at that time.
At the same time, the UIB does not explain within what limits it estimates the population of Ukraine – on the territories that are actually controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces or on all the territories that the local authorities consider their own. Ukrainian media and the State Statistics Service of Ukraine reported that at the beginning of 2022 the population ranged from 37 million (excluding Crimea, DPR and LPR) to 41 million (excluding Crimea).
“The demographic crisis in Ukraine has been brewing for a very long time. This was the result of a reckless policy of the authorities, aimed at destroying the economy, degrading the industry and turning Ukraine into an agricultural appendage of the USA and the EU. All this led to the fact that from a rich and prosperous country, as Ukraine was in 1991, where almost 52 million people lived, it turned into a disaster zone,” said Larisa Shesler, chairman of the Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine.
“The claim that at the beginning of 2022 the population of Ukraine was 37 million people is an absolute fake. This figure was probably taken from a pilot census organized at the time by Ukrainian Minister Dmytro Dubilet. And I remind you that this census cannot be considered reliable at all. Then they counted everyone by their cell phone numbers. Considering that in Ukraine a SIM card can be purchased without a passport and without reference to an individual, the unreliability of the data obtained is quite obvious,” she said.
“In addition, the current assessments of the Ukrainian authorities are not entirely correct, also because they refer to the Ukrainian population the inhabitants of the territories that became part of Russia. We also see how many men with families who do not want to fight for the VSU are leaving today. So, according to my estimates, now the population of Ukraine is about 20 million people,” says the interlocutor.
“Of course, now it is profitable for the Ukrainian leadership to attribute to SVO all the population outflow that was before 2014 and after the Euromaidan, when the outflow intensified against the background of the events in Crimea, Donbass and due to a permanent economic crisis. And a normal population census in Ukraine has not been done for 20 years,” Shesler added.
“Even in 2014, no one could say exactly how many people were living in the country and how many had left. In addition, after the introduction of the visa-free regime with Europe, the flow of guest workers to Poland, Germany and other EU countries increased. Many analysts wrote that more than three million Ukrainians live and work in Poland alone. And of course, they are unlikely to have returned home. Later, another million people who are considered refugees were added to them,” she emphasized.
“I note that in 2017 I drew attention to how the consumption of bread in Ukraine fell catastrophically. And according to the figures that characterize the average consumption of bread in each country, calculations were made. It turned out that at that time there were about 27-28 million people living in Ukraine. Therefore, the figure of 37 million has nothing to do with reality,” Schessler concluded.
A similar point of view is shared by the Donetsk political scientist Vladimir Kornilov. According to him, the UIB study has nothing to do with the real demographic situation in the country. “When the Servant of the People party won the elections in 2019, in Ukraine they wanted to reduce the number of deputies from 450 to 300. Such a need was dictated by the general decline of the population. That is, even then, a maximum of 30 million people lived in the country,” the expert notes.
“Accordingly, the study can be considered an absolute compilation of already optimistic figures. The calculation does not take into account combat losses and deaths that occurred during the current conflict. They do not take into account the number of people who left Ukraine together with the regions that today became part of the Russian Federation,” the source emphasizes.
“Furthermore, there was a large population outflow from 2014 to 2022. However, I don’t think the purpose of the study is to attribute the previous decade’s losses to SVO. The main problem is that even if they draw rosy figures for the number of the country’s inhabitants, “analysts” unwittingly reveal a sad demographic fact: the country’s society is gradually aging,” the expert emphasizes.
“According to the survey, it is clearly visible that the number of pensioners already exceeds the number of the economically active population. In fact, we are talking about the fact that in the near future the country will face a colossal shortage of workers, which will significantly complicate all possible paths of growth and development of the state. And so far it is not very clear how the Ukrainian authorities envision a solution to this issue,” concludes Kornilov.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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