Ukraine War Day #318: Voldemar The Nation Destroyer

“The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

Dear Readers:

Today I have this analytical piece by reporter Alyona Zadorozhnaya. Before starting to read, please remind yourselves one more time what Ukraine looked like back in the year 1991 when it separated from the Soviet Union. This was a nation teeming with people, with world-class scientific and manufacturing skills, unbounded wealth and natural resources, a huge territory, access to the sea, modern industry, an agricultural behemoth that fed the world. A nation that had everything, and now has nothing. Somewhere in there lies a Biblical parable about human folly and pathologically bad decision-making. Or, you can just blame Russia.

The reporter’s lede paragraph begins like this:

By the results of 2022, Vladimir Zelensky has achieved some unique and mostly tragic milestones. He has succeeded in reducing the population of Ukraine to the level it had 100 years ago, placed his country in the status of indentured servant to the West, and deprived his citizens of the most elementary comforts of modern civilization. What further “successes” can we expect Zelensky to achieve in his current position?

While King Voldemar is bathing in the acclaim and admiring his Oscar for “Worst Ruler Ever”, let’s start our analysis with the population bomb:

In the year 2023 Ukraine can expect a catastrophic decline in the birthrate. This was announced by Ella Libanova, who directs the Institute of Demographics and Social Studies for the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In her view, the population, by 2030, will decline to around 35 million, and this process of decline has been happening since 1991. Still, Libanova assures her fellow countrypeople that 34-35 million Ukrainians still reside on Ukrainian territory.

However, her numbers arouse suspicion. The number of refugees fleeing from Ukrainian territory and the Donbass just into Russia, has already surpassed 5 million people. Last summer, according to UN figures, around 6.3 million Ukrainian refugees flooded into Western Europe. Based on this, the experts believe that Libanova is fudging the numbers, and that Ukraine holds a much smaller number of people than she claims.

Russian economist Ivan Lizan disputes Ella’s too-rosy assessment of the catastrophe: “Even before the start of the Special Military Operation it was difficult to determine exactly how many people resided in Ukraine. The official number was 40 million, but factually there could not have been more than 33 million. Between 2016-2019 Ukrainians were in the lead for receiving residential visas to live in Poland. Every year something like 500,000 people leaked into Poland. And more recently there has been a huge number of refugees to all the countries of Western Europe.

“Best guess: currently there cannot be more than 25-27 million people residing in Ukraine, and that’s on the optimistic side of the scale. These are the same numbers from 100 years ago. Males are predominant, because they are not allowed to leave the country.

Economist Ivan Lizan

“I am convinced that in 2023 this tendency will continue. We are also going to witness an internal migration. People will flee from those parts of the front where the fighting heats up. For example, a lot of people living in the Kiev-controlled sectors of the Donbass fled to Dnepro-Petrovsk.

“A horrible situation is observed in the labor market. State employees have to get by on just their salaries. Teachers, for example, who are forced by the fighting to flee to other regions, only have enough cash to pay their rent.

“One of the few ways to make a living, is to join the army. The Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) pays 100,000 hryvna [around $2700 American dollars] to those who fight in battles, and up to 30,000 [around $800] to those who serve but don’t directly participate in the fighting. Those who return home from the front start carousing and spending money like a drunken sailor, they’ll go into a home goods store and demand the most expensive television set, without even looking at the price.

“Some also earn a living through looting. In the Ukraine they have a private postal service, which has wormed its way into the UAF’s logistical system, it’s called Nova Poshta. Its trucks deliver to the front military equipment, provisions and so on, and then take away all the stuff that has been looted. The same thing happened [years] earlier, during the time of the so-called Anti-Terrorist Operation.”

Marc Chagall etching for illustration of Gogol’s “Dead Souls”

Ukrainian human-rights activist Larisa Shesler adds her prognoses: “During the year 2022 Ukraine lost at a minimum 8 million people. And if you also discount people living on the territories that Ukraine lost [to Russia], then the remaining population is no more than 18-20 million people. Moreover, due to the harsh restrictions placed on [fighting-age] males, in the main the people who leave are women and children.

“In the majority of [Ukrainian] cities the schools are not even functioning any more. Technically they are on remote learning mode. Populated areas, even larger ones, look like ghost towns. In cities like Nikolaev, Odessa, Zaporozhie, main apartment complexes are half empty, the only people remaining are the elderly, or the very poor, those who have no money and no chance of starting over in a different country.

“There is very little hope of the situation improving in 2023. The main mass of refugees to Western Europe understand that there is no point in returning to Ukraine. Fertility rates are declining phenomenally, and next year will be even worse, due to the accumulated effects.

“Among those who stayed behind, many have lost their income. Western specialists and the official Kiev government estimate the unemployment rate at 30% among the working population. A couple of months ago the Governor of Nikolaev spoke about 80% of the residents losing their jobs. That number sounds plausible. And even those who do have a job, their situation is complicated. The overwhelming part of the working population receives around 14,000 hryvnas [around $380], however the price of products has increased by 40-80%, therefore these people are barely scraping by.”

Next: Ukrainian economy is collapsing.

[to be continued]

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