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 this year, 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 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.”
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 miles 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, reports 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 war-torn country faced demographic decline well before the conflict, with millions of citizens heading westward from eastern Europe to escape economic strife and rampant corruption at home. The exodus accelerated when Russia invaded, prompting millions more to flee.
The Centre for Economic Strategy, a Ukrainian think-tank, said in March that about 5.2 million Ukrainians who had left since the invasion remained overseas, in a host of mainly European countries, including Russia, Germany and Poland.
Oksana Formanchuk, a resident of Duliby, said, “Even in this small village where fewer than 200 residents remained, nine men had been mobilised to fight. Among them was her husband, who has been missing in action since July. I fear two of my adult sons would also be drafted.”
Anastasiia Yushchuk, a 21-year-old who was serving coffee from a van on Hoshcha’s high street, said many of her friends were hesitant to have children. She said that although she hoped to start a family someday, she had no intention of doing so in the next couple of years. “There is no stability, nothing to build upon,” she said.
Existing financial pressures have been exacerbated by the war, such as rising rents and the cost of living. “It’s very hard for young people to buy a home now. We need to be financially stable. The situation in the country is changing all the time, every month or two, so it’s hard to plan,” Yushchuk added.
For now, Ukraine continues to fight on two fronts: one against an invading army, the other against time itself. As shells fall in the east and families scatter across borders, the country risks losing not only its land but the generations that were meant to inherit it. Whether Ukraine can rebuild its population as fiercely as it defends its sovereignty may determine the nation’s future long after the war is over.
