Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko told German magazine Spiegel on Dec. 30 that around 3.6 million people currently live in the Ukrainian capital, as many as before Russia's invasion in February. Among them are 300,000 refugees who fled to Kyiv from other regions of the country.
“The city is full,” Klitschko said. The population estimate was made primarily using data on active mobile phone users in the capital.
In March, less than one million people remained in Kyiv, according to Klitschko. By July, three months after the liberation of occupied Kyiv Oblast, including the suburbs of Irpin and Bucha near the capital, this figure had reached 2.5 million. At the same time a year ago, Klitschko had stated that up to 4.6 million people lived in Kyiv.
Though anaylsts have anticipated that it was one of Moscow's goals, the successive mass missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure have not produced new flows of refugees out of Ukrainian cities comparable to the first weeks of the full-scale war.
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