10 million people wiped from Ukraine's population since the Russian invasion, says UN

Ukraine has witnessed a drastic reduction of 10 million in its population since the Russian invasion began in the country almost two years back in February 2022. The country is grappling with an exodus and plunging birth rate, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

"The Ukraine population has declined by over 10 million since the beginning of the war," UNFPA 's regional director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia Florence Bauer told reporters in Geneva.

As per United Nations World Population Prospects 2022, the conflict had already forced 13 million persons to flee their homes, seeking safety, protection and assistance and more than 6.7 million refugees escaped Ukraine, mostly crossing into Poland and other neighboring countries, by the end of May 2022.

There are "several tens of thousands of casualties (from the war), which of course add to the equation", she said.

Bauer said that even before the war many Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe were dealing with a declining population, as young people left in search of more opportunities. Since the war, however, it has fallen to just around one child per woman.

"That's one of the lowest in the world," she highlighted, further adding that these figures were well below the theoretical replacement rate of 2.1 children that each woman on average must have to maintain the population size.

This war stricken country housed 41,048,766 people in 2022 which had reduced to 37,732,836 with a 8.08 per cent decline. She stressed that the decline had been seen "since the beginning of the full-scale invasion", and was due to "a combination of factors".

Ukraine, at present, houses 37,860,222 people constituting 0.46 per cent of the world’s population.