Dating and family in Ukraine are now a distant dream, neither relationships are surviving, nor children – the country’s future is dark by 2051.

War not only destroys cities and kills people, it also destroys relationships, families and future generations. Amid the war that has been going on for more than four years, the situation in Ukraine today is such that dating apps are deserted, marriages are being postponed and the birth rate has fallen to record levels. Millions of youth have left the country, thousands have died in the war and those who remain are living in fear and uncertainty. The situation is so serious that experts are warning. If this situation continues for some more time, there will be no working population left in Ukraine by the year 2051. The shocking thing is that while India talks about demographic dividend, Ukraine is moving towards demographic disaster.

ukraine Why has dating and family become a dream? There is mass migration of youth. Men are being killed in battle or forcibly recruited. Economic instability and unemployment are at their peak. A mental health crisis has arisen. Migration of women and children to foreign countries has become the best option. The result is that relationships are not lasting and families are not being formed.

Marriage No happening, birth rate below one

The story is that four years of war has forced Ukrainians to rethink almost every aspect of daily life. This also includes decisions about relationships and parenthood. And these elections, in turn, are shaping the future of a country where both marriage and birth rates are falling.

Millions of Ukrainian women, who fled the country at the start of the massive offensive in 2022, have now built lives and relationships abroad. Lakhs of men are also not present, either they are deployed in the army or are living outside the country. For the women who have stayed, the prospect of meeting someone to start a family seems very distant.

According to BBC report, 28 year old Christina says that it is clearly visible that there are less men around. She lives in the western city of Lviv and has been trying to find a partner through dating apps, but without much success.

men do not go out of the house

“I think most men are now afraid to go out in this situation,” she says. She’s talking about men of fighting age who spend most of their time indoors to avoid the recruitment teams that roam the streets of Ukraine’s cities. As for the soldiers, she says, “Many of them are traumatized now because most of them, if they came back, were in places where they experienced a lot.”

Women have only 3 options

“I see only three options here,” says Daria. She goes on to list the types of men it seems are available to women like her. First are those who are trying to avoid recruitment. Daria says that someone who can’t leave the house is probably “not someone you want to be in a relationship with.”

Others are soldiers, forced to live in long-distance relationships with occasional visits from the front line. “You make a connection with them, then it goes away,” warns Daria. The remaining option is men under 25, but those 22 and under can still leave the country freely, and Daria says they can leave at any moment.

He doesn’t like any of these. Many soldiers deployed on active duty, close to the front line, are also giving up the idea of ​​starting a relationship. He says that uncertainty makes long-term commitments seem irresponsible. “It’s difficult to promise any long-term plans to a wife or fiancee. There’s a risk of being killed or injured every day, and then all the plans, as they say, will go nowhere,” says Dennis, a 31-year-old drone operator, in a voice message sent from his position in the east of the country.

future in danger

The consequences of this blockage threaten to have far-reaching consequences for Ukraine’s future. In many ways, they have already done so. Since the beginning of the attack, the number of marriages has declined from 2.23 lakh in 2022 to 1.50 lakh in 2024.

60 lakh people left the country in 2022

Ukraine has also seen a rise in deaths, mass migration – according to a UN estimate, more than six million people could leave the country by 2022 – and a sharp decline in the birth rate. All these cause a huge decline in population, which reduces the workforce and slows economic growth.

‘War’ social disaster

Oleksandr Gladun, a demographer at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, calls these trends a “social disaster of war.” According to the National Academy of Sciences, the effects of the war will last long after the end of hostilities – which, by the way, do not appear to be ending yet. According to this, the result could be that by 2051 the population will be 25.2 million people, which will be less than half of the 1992 population.

Married couples are also troubled by war

33-year-old Olena has come to a fertility clinic on the outskirts of Lviv for a checkup. She is a policeman and military instructor who is currently freezing her eggs as she and her husband are facing difficulty in having a child due to health problems. Olena says that at some point they will try IVF, but only “keeping in mind their work and the situation in the country.” Olena remembers life before the war as beautiful and full of hope, but with the beginning of the attack in 2022, her dreams of starting a family are halted.

Having children is like a responsibility towards the country.

These fears have not gone away, not even in Lviv, which, like other parts of western Ukraine, has been relatively spared the worst of Russia’s attacks, but for Olena, the question of having children now feels like a duty. “I’m doing this for myself, for my family and for Ukraine,” she says. He believes that soldiers on the front lines also die for the unborn children of Ukraine.

At the same time, Olena’s gynecologist and clinic director, Dr. Liubov Mikhailishin, is listening. She says she’s proud to be helping “strong, good women” like Olena, but her biggest concern is how the war is affecting the fertility of young Ukrainians.

demographic crisis

Regarding the demographic crisis, experts there say, “We are waiting for it.” The population of Ukraine is expected to decline from 52 million to 41 million between 1992 and 2022, due to high mortality, emigration and declining birth rates. The birth rate has dropped even further during the conflict. Gladun told Ukrainian media earlier this year that in 2022, the numbers were partly made up of 2021 pregnancies. In 2023, some couples have children in the hope that the war will end.

In 2024, when it became clear that peace was not coming soon, the birth rate fell sharply. It now stands at 0.9 children per woman, a record low, and far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the population.

The longer the war, the less the impact of compensation.

Ukrainians say that the longer the war continues, the less effective this compensation becomes, because couples who put off having children during the conflict do not get the opportunity to do so later.