Ukraine’s population has declined by around eight million since Russia invaded in February 2022, sparking an exodus and sending birth rates plunging, the United Nations said Tuesday.
The UN Population Fund said there had not been a census, but that there clearly had been a dramatic population decline in war-torn Ukraine.”Overall, Ukraine’s population has declined by an estimated 10 million since 2014 and by an estimated eight million since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022,” UNFPA’s regional director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia Florence Bauer said in comments sent to journalists.
By February 2022,
Ukraine’s population stood at around 45 million in 2014, when Russia first invaded, occupying and annexing Crimea, the agency said, citing data from the national statistics office. when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the population had dwindled to 43 million, and it has plummeted further to just 35 million today, it said, citing a combination of government and UNFPA data. Speaking to journalists in Geneva, Bauer said the dramatic decline was due to “a combination of factors”. Already before the war, Ukraine had one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, and like many countries in Eastern Europe, it had seen many young people leave in search of more opportunities abroad, she said. But in the two and a half years since the full-scale invasion, some 6.7 million people have fled the country as refugees while the birth rate has fallen to just around one child per woman, she said. “That’s one of the lowest in the world,” she said, stressing that this was well below the theoretical replacement rate of 2.1 children that each woman on average must have to maintain the population size. At the same time, Bauer said, there are the “several tens of thousands of casualties (from the war), which of course add to the equation”.
when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the population had dwindled to 43 million, and it has plummeted further to just 35 million today, it said, citing a combination of government and UNFPA data.
Speaking to journalists in Geneva, Bauer said the dramatic decline was due to “a combination of factors”.
Already before the war, Ukraine had one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, and like many countries in Eastern Europe, it had seen many young people leave in search of more opportunities abroad, she said.
But in the two and a half years since the full-scale invasion, some 6.7 million people have fled the country as refugees while the birth rate has fallen to just around one child per woman, she said.
“That’s one of the lowest in the world,” she said, stressing that this was well below the theoretical replacement rate of 2.1 children that each woman on average must have to maintain the population size.
At the same time, Bauer said, there are the “several tens of thousands of casualties (from the war), which of course add to the equation”.
Russia wants the BRICS summit to showcase the rising clout of the non-Western world, but Moscow’s partners from China, India, Brazil and the Arab world are urging President Vladimir Putin to find a way to end the war in Ukraine.
The BRICS group now accounts for 45% of the world’s population and 35% of its economy, based on purchasing power parity, though China accounts for over half of its economic might.
Putin, who is cast by the West as a war criminal, told reporters from BRICS nations that “BRICS does not put itself into opposition to anyone”, and that the shift in the drivers of global growth was simply a fact.
“This is an association of states that work together based on common values, a common vision of development and, most importantly, the principle of taking into account each other’s interests,” he said
The BRICS summit takes place as global finance chiefs gather in Washington amid war in the Middle East as well as Ukraine, a flagging Chinese economy and worries that the U.S. presidential election could ignite new trade battles.
Putin, who ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, was peppered with questions by BRICS reporters about the prospects for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
PUTIN SAYS HE WILL NOT GIVE UP SEIZED PARTS OF UKRAINE
Putin’s answer was, in short, that Moscow would not trade away the four regions of eastern Ukraine that it says are now part of Russia, even though parts of them remain outside its control, and that it wanted its long-term security interests taken into account in Europe.
Two Russian sources said that, while there was increasing talk in Moscow of a possible ceasefire agreement, there was nothing concrete yet – and that the world was awaiting the result of the Nov. 5 presidential election in the United States.
Russia, which is advancing, controls about one fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea which it seized and unilaterally annexed in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas – a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and over 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Putin said the West had now realised that Russia would be victorious, but that he was open to talks based on draft ceasefire agreements reached in Istanbul in April 2022.
On the eve of the BRICS summit, Putin met with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for informal talks that went on until midnight at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow.