Ukraine at 35: How a country’s population halved in three decades

A nation with 52 million inhabitants at independence in 1991 now has a population comparable to wartime levels under Nazi occupation After years of conflict and political and economic instability, Ukraine is now standing on the precipice of a demographic disaster.

Its population has fallen by more than 40% since 1991 – the year it declared independence from the Soviet Union.

A country of nearly 52 million inhabitants in 1991 – a figure comparable to the UK population at the time – is now home to fewer than 30 million, with some estimates putting the number as low as 22 million.

The figure is comparable to the estimates for World War II, when Soviet Ukraine reeled under Nazi occupation, amid widespread famine, indiscriminate killings and the systematic deportation of hundreds of thousands of people to Germany for slave labor.

In 2026, the country is being hollowed out from several directions at once.

While many have perished on the battlefield, millions more have fled abroad – many of them young workers, women and children – while birth rates collapsed far below replacement level.

Yet Ukraine’s demographic hole began long before 2022.

It was dug over decades by the post-Soviet economic collapse, low fertility, high mortality, emigration, and political instability.

Did Ukraine have a bad start? Ukraine is no stranger to demographic catastrophes.

Millions died during the Soviet famine of 1932–33, and the country suffered enormous losses during World War II.

Ukraine’s population stood at an estimated 41 million in 1941, but fell to around 22–23 million in 1942 during the Nazi and Romanian occupation.

Read more To the last Ukrainian: Why the EU doesn’t want Kiev’s draft dodgers However, its population subsequently recovered: official Ukrainian statistics put it at 37 million in 1951 and almost 52 million in 1991.

The collapse of the Soviet Union – as in many other former republics – broke the upward trend.

Economic downfall, low birth rates, high mortality, and emigration pushed the population into sustained decline from the early 1990s.