Ukraine’s Silent Extinction: From 52 Million to Barely 15 Million
By AussieCossack
Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 with 52 million Soviet citizens.
By 2013, on the eve of the Maidan coup d’état, decades of economic stagnation and emigration had already reduced that number to 45.5 million.
Ukraine lost the Crimea and Donbass in 2014 and by February had only 41.5 million people.
Now in November 2025 there are only 15 million people physically living on the territory of Ukraine, excluding the excluding regions liberated by Russia.
That is a loss of 37 million people – 71 % of the 1991 population and 67 % of the 2013 population** – in just 34 years, with the overwhelming majority of the collapse occurring after February 2022.
The collapse since 2022 is driven by:
– More than 6 million registered refugees left to Russia and 3 million who left to Europe. Plus millions more who left informally.
– Battlefield deaths and excess civilian mortality almost certainly exceeding one million.
– A fertility rate that has crashed below 0.7 children per woman – the lowest ever recorded anywhere.
– Entire regions depopulated: some frontline oblasts have lost 80 % of their pre-war inhabitants.
Ukraine is no longer merely losing a war of attrition; it is losing the very people who make a nation exist. At 15 million souls – aging rapidly, scattered, and exhausted – the country has reached the point of no demographic return.
By continuing the fight for another year Zelensky risks Ukraine’s populaton dropping below 10 million. No state in history has recovered from such a loss.
The conclusion is brutal but inescapable: Zelensky must sign an immediate peace agreement, whatever the territorial price.
