The population in the territories controlled by Ukraine currently stands at 29 million, notes Ella Libanova, director of the Mykhailo Ptukha Institute of Demography and Quality of Life Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
In an episode of the Open Reality special project, she reported that this joint estimate by the State Statistics Service (Derzhstat) and the Institute of Demography, made without a census, is based on data from mobile operators and state registries. "Currently, this is the joint estimate of Derzhstat and our Institute – 29 million. I always say it's about 300,000 plus or minus," Libanova noted.
Since a population census has not been conducted in Ukraine since 2001, the researchers used data from three mobile operators as a basis, supplementing it with other sources.
"We used this database as a basis, and then added various existing sources of information to it for verification and clarification: the labor market; Pension Fund data aggregated with tax authority data, which includes not only pensioners; data from the Migration Service and the Ministry of Justice from the demographic register; we also used the ‘school register’ and eHealth," the expert explained.
Libanova acknowledged that this method is not ideal, but there is currently no alternative.
She also noted that, according to Eurostat, approximately 4.3 million Ukrainians currently live in the European Union.
However, according to Libanova, there are no reliable data on the number of Ukrainians who have left for Russia since the start of the full-scale war. She also noted that a policy of demographic replacement is being implemented in the temporarily occupied territories of the Russian Federation: the Ukrainian population is being forced out and replaced by people from other regions of the Russian Federation, which, in her view, is a continuation of the practice of assimilation.
The Open Reality special project on information security and critical thinking, launched by the Open Ukraine Foundation and the Kyiv Security Forum, is an initiative of former Ukrainian Prime Minister (2014-2016) Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
