Post-Soviet Ukraine: Geodemographic Processes in Country and Dynamics of Russian Population

The article analyzes the main geodemographic trends of post-Soviet Ukraine and the dynamics of its Russian population. It was established that throughout the period under analysis, the country’s population was rapidly declining. In the 1990s, natural losses (2.5 million people) and the outflow for permanent residence to Europe and Russia (about 1 million) played a central role in this process. In 2001–2013, natural decline (3–3.5 million) and large-scale labor migration, with the following settlement of a part of those who left to work (1–1.5 million) abroad, led to population loss. Since 2014 there were territorial losses (7–7.5 million), labor migration, and emigration associated with the start of a special military operation (7–9 million people in total). For 1992–2023, the population of Ukraine, within the territorial limits controlled by the authorities in Kyiv, decreased by 2.2–2.5 times (from 51.7 million to 20–23 million people). A calculated estimate of the dynamics of the Russian population of Ukraine reveals its reduction by an order (from 11.4 to 1.1–1.2 million people). All dynamic factors contributed to such a sharp compression of the demographic potential: natural decline, outflow, territorial losses, and assimilation. However, the central role belonged to the growing scale of Russian-Ukrainian marriages and the growing choice of the titular national identity by the descendants of such families. Nevertheless, it should be taken into account the maximum growth in the practice of ethnosocial disguise among the Russian population of the country. What actually excludes the possibility of calculating the real number of people with Russian identity? Moreover, at present, the ethnonational identity of a significant part of the mixed population of Ukraine is becoming derived from the results of the conflict between the two countries.