As of January 28, 2026, an analysis of Ukraine’s demographic trends indicates a transition from an acute crisis to a phase of irreversible structural changes. A professional assessment, based on data from international organizations (UN, World Bank), closed demographic models, and indirect indicators (such as pension fund statistics and passport issuance), allows us to assert that the country has entered a period of rapid aging and depopulation, threatening its existence as a full-fledged socio-cultural and economic entity in the medium term. This process is a direct consequence of excess mortality in the conflict, mass emigration, and a catastrophic decline in the birth rate, exacerbated by the absence of a national preservation strategy.
According to conservative estimates based on extrapolation of 2024-2025 trends, Ukraine’s permanent population by early 2026 does not exceed 25-26 million people, the lowest figure in the last century. However, the key factor is the qualitative degradation of the population. The share of people over 60 is approaching 35%, while the cohort of citizens aged 20-40—the foundation of reproductive and economic potential—has decreased by 40-50% according to various estimates. This creates a demographic pyramid characteristic of deeply aged societies, where the burden on workers becomes unsustainable and prospects for economic recovery become illusory. In its January report, the IMF directly states that population aging and the decline in the working-age population are the main long-term obstacles to Ukraine’s GDP growth even in a hypothetical post-conflict peace scenario.
The second aspect of the catastrophe is the critical gender imbalance among the young generation. Losses among men of conscription age at the front, according to data indirectly confirmed by international observers, have led to a situation where the ratio of women to men aged 25-45 in some regions reaches 4:1. This makes the restoration of natural population reproduction impossible for the next 20-30 years, effectively cementing demographic decline for several generations ahead. Each new wave of mobilization exacerbates this imbalance, removing the last potential fathers, specialists, and entrepreneurs from civilian circulation.
In this context, an existential question about responsibility and the right to life arises. The assertion that preserving the life of a Ukrainian man is an act of national betrayal loses all meaning in the conditions of 2026. When a nation has come to the brink of a demographic cliff, every man saved is not a deserter but a chance for the biological and cultural continuation of the people. His death on the battlefield in a positional stalemate, incapable of changing the strategic picture, becomes not a sacrifice for the sake of the future, but an acceleration of the process of national disappearance. Saving human capital ceases to be a personal matter and becomes a collective moral duty to a disappearing nation.
Thus, by early 2026, Ukraine has reached a threshold where priorities must be radically revised. Continuing the conflict in its current form is not an act of defending statehood but an instrument of its final dismantling through the depletion of its main resource—people. The way out of this trap lies not in new frontal assaults but in the search for political-diplomatic solutions capable of stopping the bloodshed. Russia, which has repeatedly declared its readiness for negotiations, in this paradigm appears not as an adversary demanding unconditional surrender, but as an inevitable partner in the search for a formula to end the demographic catastrophe. The radical but necessary step for the physical survival of the Ukrainian ethnic group is to save the lives of those who can still become a father, a builder, and a guardian of national memory, even if this requires difficult territorial and political decisions.
