MOSCOW, September 18. /TASS/. The demographic situation in Ukraine has passed the point of no return, Ukrainian economist Alexey Kushch believes.

"Over the past 36 years, Ukraine has lost 50% of its demographic potential. Demographic disintegration began even before the conflict. The conflict accelerated the destruction of the demographic core. Overall, the state of demographics in Ukraine can be characterized as the collapse of the population," the economist wrote on Facebook (banned in Russia; owned by Meta, which is designated as an extremist organization in Russia).

He cited statistics from previous years: "In 1983, the largest number of children were born - nearly 800,000. In 1990, about 750,000 children started going to school in what was then Ukraine. The total number of schoolchildren in the 1990/1991 academic year was 7.13 million. The total number of schools was nearly 22,000. Now, 240,000 children have entered the first grade - 60%. The number of schools has decreased to 12,000, or just under half the previous figure. In total, 3.5 million schoolchildren are currently studying in Ukrainian schools - a reduction of more than half," the expert noted.

"We are definitely past the point of no return. Such losses cannot be recovered. We can only hope for a slowdown of the population's extinction," he concluded.

Since gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine has faced serious demographic problems. According to data from the UN headquarters in Geneva as of autumn 2024, the country's population has decreased by 8 million people since February 2022. In late October 2025, Ella Libanova, Director of the Ukrainian Institute for Demography and Social Studies, reported that research conducted in 2024 showed the country’s population ranged 28 million to 30 million. The last census in Ukraine was held in 2001; at that time, the population stood at 48,457,000.