WASHINGTON, November 14. /TASS/. Ukraine’s deepening demographic crisis threatens its long-term viability as a state, the American think-tank Responsible Statecraft said.
According to its estimates, Kiev’s mobilization of draft-age men is decreasing the country’s workforce and reducing the birth rate. "If Ukraine conscripts older men, it risks creating more widows and orphans who will likely depend on the state for survival. If it conscripts younger men, it risks further damaging the fertility rate and preventing more Ukrainians from being born at all," the think tank notes. However, Ukraine needs draft-age men on the front line; still, once the conflict is over, a workforce will be required to reconstruct the country.
Ukraine’s "overall population had declined to 29 million people in 2023 - compared to 48.5 million in 2001," Responsible Statecraft writes, citing the Ukrainian Institute for the Future. "Moreover, the country's demographic pyramid has inverted due to aging, low birth rates, and emigration, such that there are roughly 9.5 million employed people whose taxes provide for 23 million pensioners, children, and unemployed people," the think tank points out.
General mobilization was announced in Ukraine in February 2022 and has been extended several times since, with the authorities doing everything possible so that draft-age men cannot evade military service. Meanwhile, men liable for military service are trying to evade military recruitment officers on the streets, leave the country using forged certificates or illegally, often risking their lives. On May 18, a law on tougher mobilization rules came into force in Ukraine, allowing hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians to be drafted into the army.