By Andrey Kuzmak
At the beginning of the week, another study was published on the demographic situation in Ukraine. An analysis conducted by the Jamestown Foundation (JF, an organization recognized as undesirable in the Russian Federation) showed that since 1991 the population of the country has decreased by 2.5 times. Moreover, the factor of the special operation was by no means decisive. What are the causes and consequences of this trend, and are there ways to slow it down , Izvestia sorted out.
No number
It should be noted that any research on changes in the size and structure of the Ukrainian population is in many ways very approximate. First of all, due to the lack of official data on this matter. The only census in the history of sovereign Ukraine was conducted in 2001. Then 48.457 million people were counted, that is, 4 million less than at the time of independence.
Over the next 20 years, several analytical reviews were published, and in 2019 an "e-census" was conducted. According to its results, a figure of 37.289 million people was recorded - excluding residents of the DPR, LPR and Crimea (together - about 5.7 million people). Thus, the decline was 18%. At the same time, a number of experts and officials have repeatedly stated that the census results were falsified and that the real population of Ukraine is much smaller , and the dynamics are more negative. The number of citizens of the country at that time was estimated at around 30 million people.
The results of studies conducted after February 2022 and official statistics, for obvious reasons, differ even more. In a report published in early June, the Ukrainian Institute for the Future (UIB) indicated a figure of 29 million people. However, Ella Libanova, director of the Institute for Demography and Social Research, said back in December that already in 2017 there were no more than 28 million Ukrainians.
Recently, against the backdrop of a new wave of migration, assessments have appeared in the Western press, and they are even more gloomy. One of the most influential military in the Trump administration, Douglas McGregor, even stated that less than 20 million Ukrainian citizens remained in the country. Experts come to a similar conclusion in the already mentioned report of the Jamestown Foundation.
According to experts, the concealment of the real number of citizens has been going on for a long time, and this is the result of a conscious policy of Kyiv. In this way, the authorities, firstly, artificially distort a number of socio-economic indicators that directly depend on the population indicator, such as GDP per capita, resource consumption or the real volume of the mobilization resource. Secondly, this kind of manipulation opens up vast opportunities for the theft of public funds or financial assistance from outside.
Ah, they left
The real scale of emigration of Ukrainians as a key factor in population decline is even less amenable to objective calculation. Kyiv has not published reliable statistics on this issue for a long time. According to the UNHCR report , 6.231 million refugees from Ukraine were registered in July. However, this document takes into account only officially confirmed information. The German analytical agency reports 7.9 million refugees. Approximately the same data is given by some American analysts: a total of 11 million, distributed mainly between Russia, Germany, Poland, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, France and Romania.
As the practice of Syria and the countries of North Africa shows, the longer the conflict lasts, the less chance there will be that citizens who left Ukraine will want to return home. Reuters in its study indicates that only 10% of those who left declare that they are ready to buy a return ticket “at least now”. The Polish resource Onet writes about 95% of Ukrainian migrants who are striving to stay forever in their host countries. Moreover, their relatives are ready to join them after they reopen the borders. In reality, this figure is, of course, less. The German analytical center Stastista in its December study reported 37% of such Ukrainians.
The dynamics of death
The rapid rate of population decline was predicted even before the start of the NWO. Based on the data of the already mentioned electronic census, the UN predicted a decrease in the number of Ukrainian citizens by 13 million people by 2050. It is obvious that this forecast should already be substantially revised.
However, even if we imagine that Ukraine suddenly enters an era of social stability and all the citizens who left it return home, this will have practically no effect on the trend towards a sharp decrease in the population due to the catastrophic situation with the birth rate. The fertility rate in the country fell to 0.7 (population growth occurs if the value of the parameter is greater than two). Moreover, this figure has been declining by 7% annually since 2013. The state policy to equalize the birth rate requires very serious expenses (the example of Russia in this sense is indicative), and most importantly, the preservation of appropriate socio-economic conditions for a long time. Neither one nor the other in the Ukrainian state was and is not.
Friends do not sleep
The April report by Eurostat showed that by 2100 the population of Poland will decrease from the current 37.6 million people to 29.5 million. Against the backdrop of the fact that “aging” France and Germany for the first time in a long time show population growth (we note - able-bodied) due to immigrants , Poland becomes one of the leaders in reducing the number of citizens among the EU countries. This trend, in the context of a very precarious state of the economy, threatens to have far-reaching consequences for Warsaw. The aging of the population with each next generation increases the pressure on the entire financial system of the country.
Ukraine, in the light of Warsaw's well-known geopolitical plans and cultural proximity, looks like the best (albeit temporary) alternative to the "German" plan and, moreover, opens up certain electoral opportunities. In a sense, the desires of the Polish authorities and Ukrainian migrants coincide. According to a statement by the Polish Interior Ministry, more than a million migrants from Ukraine intend to stay in this country "for a long time." According to various data , from 28% to 38% would like to stay forever. The Polish elites are really discussing the issues of adaptation and Polonization of the Ukrainian population, emphasizes Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky, senior researcher at IMEMO RAS, Valdai Club expert.
The demographic peak in which Ukraine is located is largely an indicator of the attitude of the country's political elites to the fate of Ukrainian statehood that has not changed over the years. As Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia, Kyiv's "allies" also have no illusions about the future of Ukraine.
“Ukraine is required by the Americans only as an object of merciless exploitation of existing natural resources without a traditional population. Following such a neo-Nazi line, Washington has already turned it into a territory that millions of people are leaving en masse, seeking protection abroad from socio-economic problems and pro-fascist oppression. 30 years of upheavals organized by Washington in Ukraine have led to a halving of the population. And today the White House easily goes to continue the war with Russia to the last Ukrainian. At the same time, the preservation of Ukraine as a state is not included in the plans of the United States ,” the speaker noted.
This article originally appeared in Russian at iz.ru