Birth rate in Ukraine fell by 28% after the Russian invasion

Mothers with newborns ride an elevator into a bomb shelter under a children's hospital during an air raid in Odesa Credit: Shutterstock

According to statistics, the war in Ukraine led to a drop in the birth rate in the country by almost a third.

In the first half of 2023, 96,755 children were born in Ukraine compared to 135,079 two years earlier, according to the analytical website Opendatabot.< /p>

Although the birth rate has been declining by about 7% per year for ten years, this is the sharpest decline since Ukraine gained independence in 1991.

This year, on average, 16,100 children were born per month, compared to the average between 21,000 and 23,000 births before the Russian invasion in February 2022.

It seems that the imbalance between the sexes of children born is negligible. In the first half of this year, 49,626 boys were born, and 47,129 girls were born.

The last time the birth rate plummeted was after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, when the number of newborns dropped by 12% the following year.

“Ukraine had one of the lowest birth rates on the planet. And then the war broke out,” demographics professor Brienne Perelli-Harris told NPR in February.

The World Bank estimates Ukraine had a population of 43 million in 2021, but nearly six million people have fled. country since the beginning of the war.

Kiev Institute of Demography and Social Research. Ptuhi had previously predicted that the country would experience a «catastrophic» drop in the birth rate this year. Ukraine's population is predicted to fall below 35 million by the end of the decade.

This comes amid officials' allegations that Russia is kidnapping Ukrainian babies and young children in order to «Russify» and re-educate them. .

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Children's Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged «illegal deportation» of children.