Ukraine’s population has shrunk by more than 10 million since Russia launched its brutal invasion in February 2022, the UN said on Tuesday.
The UN Population Fund said no census had been carried out, but there had clearly been a dramatic decline in the population in war-torn Ukraine.
“Ukraine’s population has decreased by more than 10 million since the start of the war,” UNFPA regional director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Florence Bauer, told reporters in Geneva.
He stressed that the decline had been observed “since the beginning of the large-scale invasion” and was due to “a combination of factors.”
Already before the war, Ukraine had one of the lowest birth rates in Europe and, like many Eastern European countries, had seen a declining population as young people left in search of more opportunities, Bauer said.
But since the war, some 6.7 million people have fled the country as refugees, while the birth rate has fallen to just one child per woman, he said.
Countless people have fled Ukraine since the war broke out in February 2022
Ukrainian servicemen shoot with a tank while checking it after maintenance not far from Bakhmut, Donetsk region, February 5, 2024.
A law enforcement officer stands next to a residential building damaged as a result of a missile attack in kyiv on February 7, 2024.
“It is one of the lowest in the world,” he said, stressing that it was well below the theoretical replacement rate of 2.1 children that each woman must have on average to maintain population size.
At the same time, he said, there are the “several tens of thousands of (war) victims, who of course add to the equation.”
The UN announcement came as Ukrainian officials revealed that Russian artillery and drone strikes killed five people, including a child, in the Sumy and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine.
Sumy lies across the border from Kursk in Russia, where Ukrainian troops launched a major offensive in August and have been controlling swathes of territory.
“Three people, including a child, died as a result of a night attack by enemy drones on residential buildings,” regional authorities said, referring to the city of Sumy.
“This Russian terror can only be overcome through unity with the world,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in response, urging allies to supply more weapons, including air defense systems.
A group of Ukrainian soldiers rest after firing a howitzer at Russian positions in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, Oct. 21, 2024.
Heavy construction equipment is used to remove debris after a double attack by Russian forces on a hospital in Sumy, Ukraine, September 28, 2024.
Ammunition of a Ukrainian artillery squad in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, on October 21, 2024
He also called for “investments in weapons production in Ukraine” and “long-range strikes against Russian military logistics, military airfields and bases of Russian troops.”
Separately, emergency services in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces are steadily advancing, said two people had been killed and another wounded by Russian shelling in the city of Myrnograd.
The Ukrainian air force said that 60 Russian drones in total had been detected in Ukrainian airspace overnight and Tuesday morning and that 42 were destroyed.
Sumy, which borders Russia, has been under persistent shelling since the start of the war in 2022, when Russian forces briefly captured sections of the industrial territory before being driven back.
Authorities said more than two dozen Russian drones had been shot down there overnight.
The Ukrainian operation in Kursk is part of a broader roadmap to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine recently outlined by President Volodymyr Zelensky.