Zelensky finalizes creation of Unity Ministry to save Ukraine from demographic disaster international

The demographic crisis Ukraine is facing puts the country’s future in as much danger as Russian bombs. According to UN data, 6.7 million Ukrainians live abroad as refugees. According to data from the National Bank of Ukraine, Ukraine has lost 400,000 residents in the first half of this year alone. Over the same period in 2023, the population declined by 231,000 people. The total population of Ukraine is around 36 million inhabitants.

National Security Council Secretary Oleksandr Litvinenko reported in August that Ukraine was on its way to becoming like Ireland: a state with a smaller native population than those living beyond its borders. Post-war reconstruction will require the return, or at least the participation, of many of them. For this, President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to create a new ministry that will maintain relations between the motherland and the diaspora.

Last June, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry was commissioned to design what this new government agency would look like. It was the President himself who confirmed in a meeting with diplomats on 20 August that the mission was to set up a new ministry. Zelensky explained that the full name would be the Ministry of Ukrainian Unity and Countering Russian Influence on Ukrainians.

The goal is twofold, Zelensky said: “The Ukrainian state should be the real center of the current global Ukrainian nation.” The president also said a second priority would be to free millions of fellow citizens abroad from Russian influence: “We see Russia using massive propaganda resources abroad, particularly focusing on Ukrainians. ” “We see that the spiritual freedom of our people has not been resolved,” the president said, pointing to institutions like the Russian Orthodox Church as agents of “spreading dissent.”

Zelensky specified on 27 August that the new portfolio should come into force this autumn and that it should coordinate efforts for the return of more than 7.5 million Ukrainians to their homeland. The Economy Ministry estimates that it is necessary to recover 4.5 million Ukrainians to rebuild the country. The Center for Economic Strategy, a Ukrainian economic analysis institute, believes that 30% to 60% of refugees could return to Ukraine after the war ends, depending on their living conditions.

ukrainian media Hromadaske On October 8, sources in Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, which holds the absolute parliamentary majority, reported that the formation of the new ministry is stuck over the selection of its head and its budget. These sources indicate that the most likely scenario is that the Unity Ministry will have to function above all with contributions from foreign governments.

The Ukrainian Council of Ministers approved the so-called strategy for demographic development on 2 October. The challenges set by the government include repatriating five million Ukrainians. The plan does not take into account the more than one million Ukrainians who have lived in Russia since the beginning of the invasion. On October 2, predictions of Ukraine’s population decline from the National Academy of Sciences were also made public: if currently there are 35.8 million inhabitants in the entire country – 31 million in the regions of independent Ukraine –, then in 2041 it is projected that There will be 28 million there and 25 million in 2051. 20 years ago Ukraine had 48 million inhabitants. Since its independence it has been a country of migration, like the rest of the states born after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine has repeatedly raised the issue with the EU about what legal options it has to repatriate Ukrainians. Brussels responded that no one can be forced to leave the EU if they have a legal status, and even more so if they enjoy special protection. The greatest pressure is focused on men of age to organize – according to figures from the European Statistics Office, 1.5 million men between the ages of 18 and 64 live as refugees in the EU. At a political conference held in Kiev in September, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski proposed a freeze on special subsidies for Ukrainian refugees, citing Germany and the Netherlands in particular. His Ukrainian counterpart, Andriy Sibiga, who was also attending the conferences, said he agreed. “The time has come for Ukrainians to raise the issue of return programs to the EU. Of course, appropriate conditions have to be created,” Sibiga said.

political division

How to deal with the diaspora is an issue that creates high political tensions in Ukraine. This was made clear in a debate organized by the Kyiv Press Center on 12 September and in which representatives of several parties discussed future legislation that should allow Ukrainians to hold dual nationality. It is illegal to hold multiple citizenships in Ukraine. Paul Grod, president of the World Ukrainian Congress, said, “Multiple citizenship is vital to avoid losing these millions of people.” The World Ukrainian Congress is an organization that claims to represent over 20 million people in the world with Ukrainian ancestry. “We cannot put pressure on people living outside to choose. Because if they live in the United States or Germany, they will choose these nationalities,” Grodd stressed.

European Solidarity deputy Mikola Niazytsky criticized the government in September when in May it decided to deny consular services to men abroad, forcing them to return to Ukraine to do so. “We have thousands of people who stop renewing their Ukrainian documents,” Niazytsky said, “because now we have many people who have two ID cards, like in Germany, and they basically reject Ukrainian. We have a true demographic disaster before us.

Representatives of the government and opposition parties European Solidarity and Holos took part in a detailed debate in the Kyiv Press Centre, which suggests that multiple citizenship will not soon be a reality: it was discussed whether Ukrainians with dual nationality should have the right to Buy land in Ukraine, whether he should be able to receive a pension while living abroad, whether he should have the right to hold public office or what checks he must undergo from intelligence services to determine whether he is Russian detective. Grodd warned that if future legislation established “first-class and second-class citizenship”, the project was doomed to failure.

Meanwhile, time is rapidly running against Ukraine’s interests, as Holos MP Solomiya Bowrovska admitted: “The generation that has now left Ukraine has, unlike the previous generation, quickly assimilated into the host country Is.” There are millions of people, especially young women, who have restarted a new life with children who have already been going to school in other countries for three years.

More radical voices also add fuel to the fire. Dmytro Korchinsky, founder of the far-right Fraternity party, has sparked a bitter controversy this September and October by defending through the media the need to ban the departure of minors from Ukraine in order to save the country: “The mothers of these children “They want to take advantage of the wonderful opportunity that the (Russian) aggression has given them to get subsidies in European countries,” he said this Wednesday. Wire Korchinsky: “The country is losing a large number of children who will not return and who will not grow up as Ukrainians.”

There are also calls within the Ukrainian Armed Forces to lower the military conscription age for youth under 25, which many analysts warn will lead to even more youth leaving the country. In an unusual public intervention, Valery Zaluzny, the former commander in chief of the Ukrainian army and now ambassador to London, told a conference on 3 October that despite pressure he had always opposed: “We need Ukraine to exist longer”. And 20 and 30 years. “Only these people between 18 and 25 years of age will save our country.”