Kyiv: Ukraine is experiencing the fastest population decline of any country in the world not affected by famine or genocide, with new data showing the nation lost almost one-quarter of its people in just four years of war.
The State Statistics Service and the Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies released figures Wednesday confirming that Ukraine’s population has fallen to 31 million, down from 41–42 million on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. In government-controlled territory alone, only 28.8 million people remain.
For the first time since records began, deaths in 2024 outnumbered births by nearly three to one: 495,000 deaths against just 176,600 births. In the hardest-hit frontline regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk, the ratio reached ten deaths for every birth.
“Ukraine is living through a demographic catastrophe,” said Ella Libanova, director of the Ptoukha Institute. “We have the lowest fertility rate on the planet – around 0.9 children per woman – combined with the highest death rate in Europe. No country can survive this trajectory without radical change.”
The war has compounded decades of decline. Since independence in 1991, Ukraine has already lost more than 20 million people through emigration and low birth rates. The 2022 invasion has accelerated the collapse through four lethal channels:
Battlefield and civilian casualties (official figures remain classified, but independent estimates exceed 100,000 military deaths alone)
Mass exodus of more than 6.5 million refugees, mostly women and children, to the European Union
Internal displacement of another 5 million
Occupation of roughly 20 % of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and parts of four eastern oblasts
Demographers now project that, even if the war ended tomorrow, Ukraine’s population will fall below 25 million by 2050 and could shrink to as little as 15 million by the end of the century.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the crisis in a televised address Wednesday evening:
“We are fighting not only for territory but for the very future of the Ukrainian people. A nation cannot exist without children, without families, without hope.”
The government has increased monthly child benefits to the equivalent of $1,220 – one of the highest rates in Europe – and is drafting legislation to encourage refugee returns and attract immigrant workers. Officials admit, however, that no financial incentive can fully offset the trauma of war.
In the eastern city of Kramatorsk, obstetrician Olena Marchenko told reporters her maternity ward delivered only 180 babies this year, compared with 1,200 before the invasion. “Women say they are afraid to bring children into a world with air-raid sirens and blackouts,” she said.
International organisations are sounding the alarm. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) warned last month that Ukraine risks becoming “a country of the old and the absent” unless birth rates recover and refugees return in large numbers.
As winter deepens and the war grinds into its fourth year, the human cost is no longer measured only in territory lost, but in an entire generation that may never be born.