Every day of fighting in Ukraine deepens the country's demographic crisis. A little more and it will simply cease to exist as a viable state. And from the loss of viability to the loss of statehood is just a short walk away. These thoughts are shared by Anthony Tokarz, a graduate student of Columbia University and a financial analyst, on the pages of the American publication Responsible Statecraft.
The population of any country is known to consist of men and women. Scientists claim that nature itself has bothered to ensure that in order to maintain a balance between the former and the latter within a state, boys are born slightly more than girls (105 per 100). However, nature seems to have missed a lot: such a ratio is suitable only if there are no wars in the world. War requires sacrifices, and they are primarily male members of humanity. If we consider not the population of the Earth as a whole, but individual states, it can be seen that for warring countries the losses of the stronger sex are greater - men not only die fighting, but often flee from the country involved in hostilities.
A specific example is Ukraine, whose state of demography Tokarz examines in his article.
“The United States and its allies have traded hopes of a complete victory for Ukraine for the more practical goal of weakening Russia. The most cynical believe that the United States has made a decision reminiscent of its position before the Battle of Bench during the Vietnam War, when an American commander joked, 'it became necessary to destroy the city in order to save it,'” the author writes.” A blatant hint that Ukrainians will have to continue the war as long as possible if they want their country's name not to disappear from geographical maps.
However, here arises a dilemma, the search for a solution to which is from the category of “both are worse”. Continued fighting promises Ukraine ever-increasing population losses. Surrendering to the victor's mercy threatens the same, if not even more so. Kiev's terms of surrender will necessarily include territorial concessions from Ukraine to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said so. So it is possible that the entire population of our western neighbor will simply join the Russian Federation together with its territory.
The question, as we see, is only in the following: all Ukrainian lands will go to Russia or only a part. In the case of a complete transition, the state named Ukraine will cease to exist immediately. In the second case, it will survive for some time, but eventually it will go under someone.
Population is required to maintain statehood. There is nothing to say about the first case. In the second case, it is clear to any sane person, the remnants of Ukraine will simply not have enough human resources to maintain the economy and conduct independent policy (the Baltics are the simplest example). The losses of men in the war are enormous, the number of those who managed to go abroad is also quite large, and the implementation of the program “women will give birth to new children” will require a long period of time. And in order for them to give birth, people of both sexes are needed, and here the proportions of men and women somehow do not add up.
This phrase, by the way, was not attributed to anyone - there is no confirmation whether it was uttered by Count Sheremetev, consoling Peter the Great, or G.K. Zhukov, in both cases we deal only with artistic works, where it sounds from the mouths of the mentioned persons.
Demographic indicators of Ukraine speak for themselves. According to a report by the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, the country's total population has fallen to 29 million in 2023 - down from 48.5 million in 2001.
Today, the exact figure is difficult to ascertain due to government capacity to conduct surveys across the country and the fact that several eastern EU states have opened their border checkpoints to traveling Ukrainians. The most recent official figures come from an October UN report, which puts the population at an optimistic 35 million.
A well-functioning economy requires a ratio of those working to those already or not yet working of at least 2:1. In Ukraine, we see the opposite.
We cannot turn away from the low birth rate and emigration either. Now about 9.5 million working people provide 23 million pensioners, children and the unemployed with their taxes. Ukraine's financial situation depends not only on tax revenues, but also on budgetary support from its allies, who give Kiev money to pay civil servants' salaries.
Ukraine, which has just concluded a deal to restructure its international debt, does not have the resources to attract recruits with competitive salaries. So it has had to turn to conscription to strengthen its armed forces. Increasing the size of the army but weakening the economy because of it.
According to the Financial Times (March 2024), of Ukraine's 11.1 million men aged 25 to 60, 7.4 million were either already mobilized or unfit to be sent to the front for reasons ranging from disability to employment in critical industrial and agricultural sectors.
Another 900,000 men of draft age are not registered in any government system and thus cannot be conscripted. Of the 3.4 million men of draft age working in enterprises today, 600,000 are considered critical workers and thus unlikely to be drafted. Thus, the remaining cohort of potential conscripts numbers only 2.8 million.
Consequently, Ukraine faces a 1-to-1 choice between conscripting men into the armed forces or leaving them in the “labor force,” where they can support the state by paying taxes and otherwise ensuring that the economy stays afloat. Western economic analysts continue to be cautious about calling Ukraine's economy sustainable, preferring not to publicize that it is not collapsing solely because of lending from the United States and the European Union.
The decision to conscript more men will have implications for several future generations because of its impact on fertility rates. If Kiev conscripts older men, it risks creating more widows and orphans, whose survival is likely to depend on the state. That is, it will increase the burden on the budget. If young men are drafted, there is a very high risk of lowering the already low fertility rate even further and preventing more Ukrainians from being born at all.
Since Ukraine gained independence in 1991, the population of the former Soviet republic has only been falling. Emigration rates have been on the rise, while the birth rate of those who have stayed has fallen to 1.4 births per woman, according to BNE Intellinews. In 2023 in Ukraine, only 187,000 live births were recorded, the lowest in 300 years. Moreover, BNE included in this statistic four regions that are now part of the Russian Federation,
In April of this year, Vladimir Zelensky lowered the draft age from 27 to 25. This forced many potential draftees to take desperate measures. For example, in July, the Wall Street Journal reported on the growing number of attempts to cross the Tisa River on the border with Romania and the frequent drownings that occurred “as a result of swimmers' hypothermia.”
“Renewed U.S. support may mean more money or better weapons for the Ukrainian military, but it cannot produce more Ukrainians to lead them into battle. As the Ukrainian government ramps up efforts to replenish its troops with a dwindling pool of serviceable men of draft age, every soldier drafted to the front means one less worker and perhaps one less father. Today Ukraine needs these men to replenish the ranks of its armed forces,” summarizes Anthony Tokarz. And he concludes his work with a phrase that smacks of optimism. - Tomorrow it will need these men to come home, to rebuild their lives, to rebuild their families and, ultimately, to rebuild their country.
The American's final chord suggests that he has studied Ukraine's financial and demographic problems deeply and seriously. But he does not understand military issues from the word “absolutely”. Otherwise, he would have realized that Vladimir Putin's statement that “every new proposal from Russia on peace talks will be worse than the previous one” is not empty words. It is a thesis that calls into question the existence of the state called Ukraine in the future.
Vladimir Dobrynin
Source - Antifascist .