Vitalii Kulyk, Political Scientist
War transforms not only the front line but also Ukraine's social structure. While the first years of the full-scale invasion were dominated by the challenge of the country's physical survival, another front is now becoming increasingly apparent—the struggle against poverty and inequality.
New socio-economic data reveal an alarming trend: Ukraine is rapidly moving toward a model of society characterized by a high concentration of income and widespread poverty. According to estimates, the Gini coefficient has risen to 0.50, while the poverty rate—measured against the actual subsistence minimum—has reached nearly 38% of the population. This means that the war is increasingly becoming a catalyst for social stratification rather than merely economic exhaustion. Unless combating poverty becomes one of the central priorities of public policy today, post-war Ukraine risks inheriting not only destroyed infrastructure but also a society marked by entrenched inequality, intergenerational poverty, institutional crisis, and the alienation of broad segments of the population from the nation's common wealth.
What makes the situation particularly dangerous is that Ukraine's previous social landscape has proven to be a statistical illusion. For many years, official indicators concealed the true scale of inequality due to shadow employment, offshore capital outflows, and the peculiarities of income accounting. The full-scale war has dismantled these illusions. Part of the middle class has emigrated, the real incomes of most households have failed to keep pace with the rising cost of living, and an increasing number of Ukrainians have become dependent on pensions, social transfers, and state assistance. Meanwhile, the decline in the number of pensioners—from 13.5 million in 2014 to fewer than 10 million today—is not evidence of demographic improvement or rising prosperity. Rather, it reflects the consequences of war, occupation, forced migration, and a deep demographic crisis. At the same time, the burden on those who remain economically active continues to grow, while the financial base of the welfare state steadily contracts.
Against this backdrop, political helplessness appears particularly alarming. Most Ukrainian political forces continue to operate through the language of broad declarations: "economic growth," "recovery," "reforms," "the European choice," and "digitalization." Political discourse is dominated either by a crude form of right-wing libertarianism or by the liberal latte political culture of the "champagne elite." They remain committed to the paradigm of catch-up development while relentlessly dismantling the remaining foundations of Ukraine's welfare state.
Their slogans and formulas largely ignore what is likely to become the defining political question of the coming decade: how can Ukraine prevent the mass impoverishment of society during a prolonged war and in its aftermath? Poverty cannot be overcome simply through appeals to entrepreneurship or deregulation. It requires answers to fundamental questions of political economy: What model of redistribution should the country adopt? How can decent work be guaranteed? How can domestic demand be sustained? How can the social protection system be preserved? And how can economic efficiency be reconciled with social justice? This is why Ukraine needs not another electoral campaign but a new developmental discourse that places poverty reduction at the very center of the state's long-term strategy.
European experience during recent crises demonstrates that the most resilient states were not those with minimal government intervention, but those that consistently developed a social investment model. Following the 2008 financial crisis, and later during the COVID-19 pandemic, the countries that invested in human capital, social protection, vocational retraining, employment support, and affordable housing recovered economic activity most rapidly. Large-scale programmes supporting both workers and employers preserved jobs, sustained domestic demand, and protected productive capacity. This confirms an important conclusion of contemporary political economy: the welfare state is not a burden on development—it is a precondition for it. Investments in people generate a double dividend: they support the economy today by maintaining demand while creating a more productive workforce for tomorrow.
This approach is particularly relevant for Ukraine under conditions of war and demographic decline. Population ageing, the emigration of millions of citizens, and labour shortages mean that the country's principal resource is no longer raw materials or even external financing, but human capital. Social investment should therefore encompass the entire life cycle: quality education, lifelong learning and retraining, active labour market policies, modern healthcare, affordable housing, and support for families with children, older people, internally displaced persons, military personnel, and veterans.
David Bokhorst describes this approach as the "welfare commons." Society invests in the development of human potential not as a budgetary expense but as a strategic asset that underpins economic growth, the long-term sustainability of the pension system, and national competitiveness. For Ukraine, which is already facing labour shortages and large-scale depopulation, this is not an ideological preference but a matter of national survival.
When the war ends, Ukraine will compete not only for investment but also for the return and retention of its own citizens. More than ever, the country needs not another electoral technology but a discursive political force with a coherent political-economic vision of development. Such a force should offer a new social contract that places people—not abstract macroeconomic indicators—at its center. It should articulate a programme based on the fair distribution of resources, the modernization of the welfare state, progressive taxation, the expansion of social housing, support for decent work, investment in human capital, and the reduction of inequality as a prerequisite for sustainable economic development.
