Ukraine is experiencing one of the deepest demographic crises in the world and is increasingly at risk of turning into a country of widows and orphans, writes CNN.
Birth rates in the country are falling rapidly. A growing number of people are facing fertility problems or postponing the decision to have children indefinitely. Against this backdrop, losses at the front continue, while millions of citizens who left the country have already rebuilt their lives abroad.
“This is a catastrophe. No country can exist without people. Even before the war, Ukraine’s population density was low and very unevenly distributed,” said leading Ukrainian demographer Ella Libanova.
By her estimate, since the start of the full-scale war Ukraine has lost around 10 million people, and the birth rate has effectively collapsed.
The war has also exacerbated the medical aspects of reproductive health. Valeriy Zukin, director of the Nadiya reproductive medicine clinic, notes that pregnancy has become more difficult to carry.
“We are seeing more complications, more anomalies, and greater difficulty in carrying pregnancies to term,” he said.
Clinic staff member Alla Baranenko also points to other alarming changes—the rise in cases of premature menopause among young women.
“The quality of eggs has deteriorated, and their number is declining—and this is due to stress, and it affects not only my patients but also egg donors, meaning women without any reproductive problems. And yet the quality of their eggs is worse,” she said, adding that sperm quality among Ukrainian men, especially those who have returned from the front, has also declined markedly.