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Almost 3 times more people died in Ukraine than were born in 2024, data shows

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Almost 3 times more people died in Ukraine than were born in 2024, data shows
The Dnipro River and city skyline from the Klitchko Pedestrianized Bicycle Bridge, known as the Glass Bridge, in Kyiv, Ukraine on June 27, 2022. (Andrew Kravchenko/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Ukraine registered 495,090 deaths of various causes in 2024, which is almost three times more than were born, according to data published by the Justice Ministry.

The data was collected only on territory currently controlled by Ukraine. Due to a lack of access, figures for the partially occupied Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts are likely incomplete and the data is completely missing from occupied Luhansk Oblast and Crimea.

The highest mortality rate of 53,268 deaths was recorded in the front-line Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. About 35,000 deaths were recorded in the capital, Kyiv, and Kharkiv Oblast, located in the northeast on the border with Russia.

Justice Ministry data showed that 176,679 children were born in Ukraine in 2024. Compared to data before the full-scale invasion in 2021, births decreased by 97,093, or 35.5%.

The city of Kyiv recorded the highest number of births, with 19,706, followed by Lviv Oblast in the west with 15,642, and the heavily populated central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with 14,029.

The least amount of children were born in Kherson Oblast with 434 births recorded last year. Kherson Oblast is partially occupied by Russia, with the Ukrainian-controlled parts subject to regular Russian attacks.

The country's population went from a peak of over 50 million in the early 1990s to over 37 million by January 2024. According to one of the U.N.'s projections, Ukraine's population could drop to 15.3 million by 2100.

Demographic disaster: Ukraine’s biggest post-war threat
The threat of a demographic crisis has been building in Ukraine for a while but Russia’s full-scale invasion has pushed it to the breaking point. The country had a population of 41 million in 2021, by the government’s reckoning. Now, it hovers around 35 million and experts warn
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