Governor: Mykolaiv population returns close to pre-invasion level

Nearly all of Mykolaiv Oblast's residents who left after Russia launched its full-scale invasion have returned home, Governor Vitaliy Kim said in an interview on April 20.

According to Kim, the pre-invasion population of the city of Mykolaiv was around 460,000 people. After dropping to 200,000, it gradually started to rise once the nearby city of Kherson was liberated by Ukrainian forces in November 2022.

Around 400,000 people are now in the city based on data from mobile operators, Kim said.

Three settlements in Mykolaiv Oblast, on the Kinburn Spit across the Dnipro River, still remain under Russian occupation.

According to a survey released on Feb. 28 by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), one in three Ukrainian refugees in the European Union ultimately wants to return home.

Since the beginning of Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine, more than 8 million Ukrainian refugees have left for another European country, and about 4.8 million have applied for temporary protection in one of the EU countries, according to the UN Refugee Agency.

Russia’s war forced millions of Ukrainians to flee abroad. How many will return?

Viktoria Vozna, 25, had always enjoyed her quiet life in native Brovary, a city just east of Kyiv, and dreamed of raising her own children there one day. She never wanted to live abroad, but Russia’s brutal war forced her out of the country. After saving up enough money

Kyiv IndependentThaisa Semenova