The demographic bleeding that Ukraine is suffering puts the country’s future at risk as much as the Russian bombs. 6.7 million Ukrainians, according to United Nations data, reside abroad as refugees. Ukraine has lost 400,000 inhabitants in the first eight months of this year, according to statistics from the National Bank of Ukraine. In the same period of 2023, the population drop was 231,000 people. The total population of Ukraine is close to 36 million inhabitants.
Ukraine is on the way to being like Ireland, Oleksandr Litvinenko, secretary of the National Security Council, illustrated in August: a state with less of a native population than those who live far from its borders. Post-war reconstruction will require the return, or at least the involvement, of many of them. For this, the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wants to create a new ministry that maintains the link between the homeland and the diaspora.
Last June, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry was commissioned to design what this new government agency would be like. It was the president himself who confirmed on August 20 in a meeting with diplomats that the mission was to establish a new ministry. Zelensky explained that the full name would be the Ministry of Ukrainian Unity and Countering Russian Influence on Ukrainians.
The goal is twofold, Zelensky said: “The Ukrainian state must be the real center for the current global Ukrainian nation.” The president also stated that the other priority will be to free the millions of fellow citizens abroad from Russian influence: “We see that Russia is using massive propaganda resources abroad, especially focusing on Ukrainians.” “We see that the spiritual independence of our people is not resolved,” the president added, pointing to institutions such as the Russian Orthodox Church as an agent “to spread the disagreement.”
Zelensky specified on August 27 that the new portfolio must come into force this fall and that it must coordinate efforts for the return to the homeland of more than 7.5 million Ukrainians. The Ministry of Economy estimates that for the reconstruction of the country it is necessary to recover 4.5 million Ukrainians. The Center for Economic Strategy, a Ukrainian economic analysis institution, considers that between 30% and 60% of refugees could return to Ukraine after the war ends, depending on the living conditions they may find.
The Ukrainian media Hromadske reported on October 8, from sources in the Servant of the People, Zelensky’s party that holds the absolute parliamentary majority, that the formation of the new ministry is stuck in the selection of its head and the budget it will have. The most likely thing, these sources indicate, is that the Ministry of Unity will have to function above all with contributions from foreign governments.
The Ukrainian Council of Ministers approved the so-called Strategy for Demographic Development on October 2. Among the challenges set by the Government is to repatriate five million Ukrainians. The plan does not take into account the more than one million Ukrainians who have resided in Russia since the beginning of the invasion. That October 2, the predictions of population decline for Ukraine from the National Academy of Sciences were also made public: if there are currently 35.8 million inhabitants throughout the country – 31 million in the territories of free Ukraine -, for In 2041 it is estimated that there will be 28 million and in 2051, 25 million. Ukraine had 48 million inhabitants 20 years ago. Since its independence it has been a country of emigration, like the rest of the States born after the dismemberment of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine has repeatedly raised with the European Union what legal options there are for repatriating Ukrainians. Brussels responds that no one can be forced to leave the EU if they are in a legal situation, and even more so if they have special protection. The pressure has focused above all on men of age to be mobilized – according to data from the European Statistical Office, 1.5 million men between the ages of 18 and 64 reside as refugees in the EU. At a political conference held in September in kyiv, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski proposed turning off the tap on special subsidies for Ukrainian refugees, specifically citing Germany and the Netherlands. His Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sibiga, who was also participating in the conferences, said he agreed. “It is time to raise the issue of return programs for Ukrainians to the EU. Of course, the appropriate conditions have to be created,” said Sibiga.
Political division
How to deal with the diaspora is an issue that generates high political tension in Ukraine. This was made clear in a debate organized on September 12 by the kyiv Press Center and in which representatives of several parties discussed the future law that should allow Ukrainians to have dual nationality. In Ukraine it is illegal to have multiple citizenships. “Multiple citizenship is critical to not lose these millions who are gone,” said Paul Grod, president of the World Ukrainian Congress, an organization that claims to represent more than 20 million people in the world with Ukrainian ancestry. “We cannot push people who live outside to have to choose. Because if they live in the United States or Germany, they will opt for these nationalities,” Grod stressed.
The deputy Mikola Kniazhitskii, from European Solidarity, criticized the Government in September when in May it decided to deny consular services to men abroad, forcing them to return to Ukraine to do so. “We have hundreds of thousands who stop renewing their Ukrainian documents,” Kniazhitskii said, “because now we have many who have two ID cards, like in Germany, and they basically reject Ukrainian. “We have a true demographic catastrophe.”
Representatives of the Government and the opposition parties European Solidarity and Holos engaged in the debate at the kyiv Press Center in details that foreshadow that multiple citizenship will not soon be a reality: there was discussion about whether a Ukrainian with dual nationality should have the right to buy land in Ukraine, whether he should be able to receive a pension if he has lived abroad, whether he should be able to have the right to hold public office or what checks he must pass from the intelligence services to determine that he is not a Russian spy. Grod warned that if the future law establishes “first-class and second-class citizenship,” the project is doomed to failure.
Meanwhile, time is running fast against Ukraine’s interests, as Holos MP Solomiia Bovrovska admitted: “The generation that has now left Ukraine, unlike the previous ones, assimilates faster to the host country.” There are millions, especially young women, who have restarted a new life, with children who have already been attending school for three years in other countries.
The more radical voices also add fuel to the fire. Dmitro Korchinski, founder of the far-right Fraternity party, has provoked a bitter controversy this September and October by defending through the media the need to prohibit the departure of minors from Ukraine to save the country: “The mothers of these children They want to take advantage of the wonderful opportunity that the invasion has given them [rusa] to receive subsidies in European countries,” he said this Wednesday in Telegraph Korchinski: “The nation is losing enormous numbers of children who will not return and who will not grow up as Ukrainians.”
Within the Ukrainian Armed Forces there are also voices calling for lowering the age of military mobilization for young people under 25 years of age, which multiple analysts warn would cause even more young people to leave the country. In an unusual public intervention, Valeri Zaluzhni, former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army and now ambassador in London, stated in a conference on October 3 that he had always opposed it despite the pressure he received: “We need Ukraine to exist from now on. 20 and 30 years. These people between 18 and 25 years old are the ones who will save our country.”