Number of marriages in Ukraine way higher than of divorces during war
A wedding couple kiss as they celebrate together with Ukrainians who lived in Kherson and left it due to the Russian occupation in downtown of the South Ukrainian city of Odesa. Photo EPA, STR
Eastern Europe
In Ukraine, the group of people who got married is much larger than the number of people who divorced.
In total, 86,028 couples tied the knot in the first half of 2023. On the other hand, 10,139 divorces were filed. A quick calculation shows that the number of marriages is 8.5 times the number of separations, Slovoproslovo writes.
Especially in the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Kyiv and Lviv, many people sealed their wedlock. The lowest number of marriages was found in Kherson, Donetsk, Zaporizhzia, Ternopil and Chernivtsi.
At the same time, the number of divorces was highest in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and the Odesa area.
Compared to the same period in 2022, the number of marriages has declined by 17 per cent, and the number of divorces grew by 33 per cent.
Catastrophe
Overall, the war is an outright disaster for Ukraine's demography. Ella Libanova, doctor of economics and director of the Institute of Demography and Social Research, says to Slovoproslovo that Ukraine has lost about a million people, as many were killed by the war and many others have left the country. "The loss of a million people is a catastrophe for Ukraine", Libanova believes. "In a moral sense, in a mental sense and in a simple quantitative sense."
According to Tetyana Berezhna, a government official, more than 6.2 million Ukrainians are residing abroad. Yet, the numbers vary. "If we talk about the departure of Ukrainians outside of Ukraine, the numbers here are very different. We receive data from both the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Eurostat, which keeps records of Ukrainians temporarily registered in EU countries. We have information from mobile operators, as well as from analytical institutions."
In June, the human rights commissioner estimated that more than 8 million Ukrainians have fled to different countries since the beginning of 2022. More than 5 million of them have applied for temporary resident status in an EU member state.
Reunification
Libanova is afraid that several of these refugees will not return to their home country. She points out that many of the women who have left are educated. "I am very afraid that after the victory and the abolition of martial law, the reunification of families will take place – but not in Ukraine. And the longer the war lasts, the more infrastructure –industrial, residential and other– will be destroyed, the more likely it will happen."
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