Migration Policy Office: Every year, Ukraine loses a “Zhytomyr” from the map
Vasyl Voskoboinyk says Ukraine’s population is shrinking at a catastrophic pace.
Ukraine is losing 300,000 people every year – the equivalent of an entire city the size of Zhytomyr being wiped off the demographic map every twelve months. These figures were cited by Vasyl Voskoboinyk, head of the Migration Policy Office and a labor migration expert, in an interview with the Dumai YouTube channel. In his words, the country is “literally dying out.”
Voskoboinyk stressed that even without counting wartime losses, annual deaths in Ukraine stand at around 500,000, while only 180,000 to 220,000 children are born. The fertility rate has collapsed to 0.7, even though simple population replacement requires an average of 2.2 children per woman. According to the expert, this trend has remained unchanged since the Euromaidan, and there is no sign of a reversal.
The demographic abyss is being deepened by mass outmigration. In Voskoboinyk’s forecast, only 10 to 15 percent of those who left the country will return after the war – somewhere between 200,000 and one million people.
Once the borders are fully opened, the expert expects a new wave of emigration: men will leave to rejoin their families in Europe, while young people will go abroad in search of work. As he put it, people will leave immediately “just in case.”
Earlier, the UOJ reported that analysts in Britain had estimated Ukraine’s real population at 20 million.
