War-torn Ukraine facing collapse in population

Births drying up as hundreds of thousands killed or wounded while millions more have fled the country

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While many Ukrainian hospitals are struggling to cope with the endless influx of wounded, a maternity ward in the western town of Hoshcha lies eerily deserted.

The hospital in Hoshcha has recorded just 139 births so far in 2025, down from 164 in 2024, and a far cry from just over a decade ago when more than 400 babies were born every year, according to the local authorities.

“Many young men have died,” gynaecologist Yevhen Hekkel lamented in his office. “Young men who, bluntly speaking, were supposed to replenish Ukraine’s gene pool.”

The Ukrainian authorities are facing a stark quandary as the country spirals into a demographic disaster: Once the war ends, who will be left to pick up the pieces?

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in almost four years of fighting while millions more have fled the country and births are drying up.

Hoshcha, a small town of about 5,000 people, is hundreds of kilometres from the nearest front but is nonetheless facing the full force of the population crisis.

In the nearby village of Sadove, a school that once taught more than 200 pupils has been shut down.

“Two years ago, we were forced to close this institution. Why? Because there were only nine children there,” head of Hoshcha’s town council Mykola Panchuk told Reuters.

Ukraine's population — 42 million before the full-scale invasion in February 2022 — has already shrunk to below 36 million, including several million in areas captured by Russia, according to the demography institute at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences.

It estimates the figure will drop to 25 million by 2051.

The collapse is gathering pace.

The country has both the highest death rates and lowest birth rates in the world, according to 2024 estimates in the CIA World Factbook: For every birth, there are around three deaths.