Institute of Demography: Ukraine is about to change its ethnic composition

Oleksandr Hladun, deputy director for scientific work at the Institute of Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, said that our country is on the verge of changing the ethnic composition of the nation.

Commenting on the information that there are between 28 and 34 million people in the country, Hladun stressed that continued population reduction would lead Ukraine to lose its influence in Europe and change the ethnic composition of the nation.

"Ukraine has been losing its population since the 1990s. If this continues, we will lose our weight in Europe as a state," Hladun said.

According to him, Ukraine, as the largest country in Europe, must fill its territories with Ukrainians, because otherwise it will be filled with other nationalities.

"If we shrink, these territories will be filled by other people and there is nothing we can do about it... We will change the ethnic, and social composition," Hladun explained.

He said that the data of the Institute of Demography that there are between 28 and 34 million people in Ukraine; we have such a discrepancy in the figures because of the lack of accurate information.

"No one knows how many we are now ... and such a big discrepancy is because we have no real numbers of births, deaths and also no data on migration," the expert noted.

Hladun stressed that the data of Ukrainian border guards are half as much as the UN information on Ukrainians with temporary protection in Europe.

In addition, he said that there are almost three million of our people on Russian territory.

"We are talking about 2.9 million people. I think that's a lot... We don't know who the Russians include in that number, so there is a big disagreement in the estimates," he said.