After two and a half years, figures are starting to emerge on the actual death toll of the war in Ukraine. The figures are not only devastating, but they also come at a time when the country is facing a historically low birth rate.
Just yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that some 1 million soldiers are either dead or injured. Notably, it gives no estimate for dead or injured civilians.
According to Magyar Nemzet, Ukraine is undoubtedly facing a catastrophic demographic crisis. Having already suffered a population loss in the wake of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, there were still around 40 million Ukrainians living in Ukraine before Putin invaded, versus a census-reported 48 million in 2001.
However, UN data now shows that 6 million people have since fled due to the war, and with additional territories occupied by Russian forces, the actual Ukrainian population may currently be between 25 and 27 million people.
Oleksandr Gladun, a researcher at the Ptoukha Demographic Institute, puts this figure a bit higher at 29 million people as of the beginning of this year. However, he says no true number can be ascertained until a few years after the war, when it can be seen how many Ukrainians return home. Unfortunately, the dead and fleeing are only a part of the problem, as in the meantime, the birth rate in Ukraine has fallen to a historic low.
The Ukrainska Pravda news portal says that, based on data from Opendatabot, three times as many people died as there were births In the first half of this year. Before Russia’s invasion, in 2021, 130,000 births were registered, while this number has now dropped to 87,000, versus 250,000 deaths.
This demographic crisis has reportedly had a serious impact on Zelensky’s war strategy, as former Ukrainian officials have stated that one of the reasons Zelensky refuses to mobilize men between the ages of 18 and 25, who are a key age group for the military in any war, is because most of them do not yet have children. If they are killed or permanently injured at the front, experts say, it would seriously damage Ukraine’s future demographic prospects.
