The Geographic & Demographic Death of Ukraine

What is becoming more and more apparent as the Russian campaign slowly, but inexorably grinds the Ukrainian army in the Donbass into the ground, is that there will be a Novorossiya which may be comprised of all the lands east of the Dniepr river together with the lands from Odessa to the northern end of the border with Moldova (making Transnistria safe). The longer this process of destruction takes the better for the Russians, as the remains of the Ukrainian army is ground into the dirt or sent off to POW camps, and the European economies start to disintegrate under the blowback of their self-flagellatory sanctions. Leaving a rump, enclosed Ukraine with no access to the sea and a declining Europe.

What is also becoming more apparent is that that rump Ukraine will be heavily depopulated, both by the losses of war and by the millions of refugees that will never return. By banning the emigration of men between the ages of 18 to 60 the Ukrainian state has made sure that 90% of the refugees are women and children. A nice white demographic bonus for the ageing populations of Europe, to be genetically integrated through relationships with European men. This will be on top of a long-term depopulation rate that is quite staggering, 300,000 per year since 1993. This is what shock therapy neoliberalism does to a nation that used to be the industrial heartland of the Soviet Union, but never recovered the level of wealth per capita of those Soviet days after the collapse of the 1990s; a performance far below Eastern Europe and Russia itself. Still ruled by oligarchs in the same way that Russia was under Yeltsin in the 1990s, and what is not taken by the oligarchs is taken by Western extractive capital. The result has been a deeply corrupted and poor nation known more for emigration, middle-aged foreign men shopping for wives, the sex trade, and Nazi-loving gangs than for its industry.

The Ukrainian population peaked at over 52 million in 1993, by 2014 it was already down to 45 million. After the Western-led right-wing coup in 2014 and the terror that was set upon the citizens in the south and east of the country to suppress their resistance to the coup-government, the rate of emigration significantly increased. It is at this point that official Ukrainian statistics cannot be trusted, as it is obvious that the scale of emigration was far beyond what was reported. Between 2010 and 2015 the number of Ukrainians in Russia jumped by at least 5 million and has most probably increased further since then. Combined with continued emigration to the West, the Ukrainian population probably fell to about 35 million in the past 10 years, a catastrophic demographic collapse given that most who emigrate are in the prime of their working lives together with their children. The Ukrainian birth rate is far below replacement rate, and not enough to offset a high death rate, creating an additional natural population decline rate independent of migration levels.

With the war-driven emigration of 6.3 million people, 90% women and children, mostly from the West of the country, that area is being emptied of its remaining younger adult women and their children. What will be left will be the old, the working-age men who had not left before the war started (usually the less productive, less intelligent and less driven of the group) and some unfortunate others who did not leave for whatever reason. About 29 million of them, given the estimated 6 million+ emigrant refugees. The incredible shortage of young men, due to the previous levels of emigration, is evident in the little trained and physically unfit middle aged and older men being found at the Ukrainian front line. What is left of the young men is slowly being bled white and interned in POW camps.

The West of Ukraine is a poor backwater, with Ukrainian industry and even the best agricultural land in the East. A land-locked rump oligarchic kleptocratic neoliberal poor state which will not be appealing to those emigrants who are finding better lives in Europe. So, it will be home to an ageing population with a government that possesses an insufficient economic base to even pay their pensions (plus all the lend lease loans from the West), unless the Polish claim part of it as their current pronouncements intimate. The Polish state has managed this area before and will understand the need to repopulate it with Poles to remove the Ukrainian nationalism that led to the deaths of so many ethnic Poles at the hands of Ukrainian terrorists and Waffen SS members. The Hungarians may also take a small piece, so that the ethnic Hungarians can feel free to speak their own language and enjoy their own culture in peace. Not all of Western Ukraine may be taken by the Poles, leaving an even sadder rump state along the lines of a Moldova dependent upon remittances from its economically exiled population.

So yes, the Western Ukrainians and their Western diaspora and facilitators may shout proudly Slava Ukraini, but the reality is that we are living through the end of Ukraine both geographically and demographically. Zelensky already has the British passports for himself and his family, probably to settle in “Little Russia” in London with all the exiled oligarchs. He won’t be living through the slow death of Ukraine. Neither will Novorossiya, which may very well flourish once released from the bloodsuckers that have kept it poor for so long, and the right wing Ukro-nationalists that have terrorized it for the past eight years. A perfect location for Chinese investment, especially when those investors are not at risk of a government that will steal their assets to enrich local oligarchs. More Smert Ukraini and Slava Novorossiya perhaps. That is of course if the Russians stop at the Dniepr.