Ukraine registered 259,850 deaths during the first half of 2026, 3.5 times the number of registered births, which totaled 73,290, according to a report on civil status registration published by the Ministry of Justice.
Compared with the first half of 2025, the number of births fell by 13,500, or 15.6%, while the number of deaths increased by 10,850, or 4.4%.
As previously reported, Ukraine registered 485,300 deaths in 2025, nearly three times the number of births (168,780). Compared with 2024, the number of births declined by 7,900, or 4.5%, while the number of deaths decreased by 9,790, or 2%.
Regionally, the highest ratio of registered deaths to births was recorded in Donetsk and Kherson regions, where deaths exceeded births by 18.7 and 13.7 times, respectively.
Other regions with significantly worse-than-average ratios included:
- Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Chernihiv regions: 5.7–6.7 times;
- Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, and Cherkasy regions: 4.8–5.1 times;
- Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad regions: 4.5 times each.
According to the Ministry of Justice, the lowest death-to-birth ratios were recorded in:
- Rivne region: 1.8;
- Volyn region: 2.0;
- Zakarpattia region: 2.2;
- Kyiv: 2.4;
- Lviv and Chernivtsi regions: 2.5;
- Ivano-Frankivsk region: 2.8.
For comparison, during the first half of pre-war 2021, Ukraine registered 349,040 deaths and 133,460 births, meaning deaths outnumbered births by 2.6 times.
On September 30, 2024, Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers approved the country's Demographic Development Strategy through 2040, along with an implementation plan for 2024–2027.
According to the strategy, estimates by the Institute for Demography and Quality of Life Problems of the National Academy of Sciences suggest Ukraine's population could decline to 28.9 million by 2041 and to 25.2 million by 2051.
The document notes that Ukraine's population stood at 48.5 million at the time of the 2001 national census. According to estimates by the M. Ptukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies, the population had declined to 42 million as of January 1, 2022, and to 35.8 million by July 2024, including 31.1 million in government-controlled territory.
Earlier this month, Ella Libanova, director of the institute, said during the Open Reality special project that the current joint estimate by the State Statistics Service and the institute places the population of government-controlled Ukraine at approximately 29 million, plus or minus 300,000 people.
