Sitting in a wine bar in Kyiv on a Saturday night, Daria, 34, opens a dating app, scrolls, then puts her phone away. After spending more than a decade in committed relationships she's been single for a long time. I haven't had a proper date since before the war, she says.
Four years of war have forced Ukrainians to rethink nearly every aspect of daily life. Increasingly that includes decisions about relationships and parenthood – and these choices are, in turn, shaping the future of a country in which both marriage and birth rates are falling.
Millions of Ukrainian women who left at the start of the 2022 full-scale invasion have now built lives and relationships abroad. Hundreds of thousands of men are absent too, either deployed in the army or living outside the country.
For those women who stayed, the prospect of meeting somebody to start a family feels increasingly remote.
Khrystyna, 28, says it's noticeable that there are fewer men around. She lives in the western city of Lviv and has been trying to meet a partner through dating apps without much luck.
Many, I would say most [men] are afraid to go out now, in this situation, she says, raising her eyebrows. She is referring to the men of fighting age who spend most of their time indoors to avoid the conscription squads roaming the streets of Ukraine's cities.
As for soldiers, many are traumatised now because most of them – if they have returned – were in places where they experienced a lot, she says.
Daria feels much the same. I only see three options here, she says, listing the types of men she believes are available to women like her. First are those trying to avoid conscription. Someone who can't leave the house is probably not a person you want to build a relationship with, Daria says.
Then there are soldiers, forced into long-distance relationships with sporadic visits from the front line. With them, Daria warns, you build a connection, then he leaves. The remaining option, she adds, are men under the conscription age of 25. But those aged 22 and under can still leave the country freely, and Daria says they could take off at any moment.
Closer to the front line, many men on active duty are also shelving the idea of starting a relationship. Uncertainty, they say, makes long-term commitments feel irresponsible.
Ruslan, a soldier serving in the Kharkiv region, knows the promises he can make are limited. Beyond visits once or twice a year, flower deliveries and the odd phone call, he asks, what can I actually offer a girl right now?
“Promising a wife or a fiancée any long-term plans is difficult, says Denys, a 31-year-old drone operator, in a voice message sent from his position in the east of the country. Every day there is a risk of being killed or injured, and then all plans will, so to speak, go nowhere.
The consequences of this disruption threaten to ripple far into Ukraine's future. Since the start of the invasion, the number of marriages has decreased sharply from 223,000 in 2022 to 150,000 in 2024.
Ukraine has also seen deaths increase, enormous emigration – more than six million people have left the country since 2022, according to an UN estimate – and a stark decline in birth rates.
These all lead to a dramatic drop in population, which in turn shrinks the workforce and slows economic growth. Oleksandr Hladun, a demographer at Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences, describes these trends as the social catastrophe of war.
Birth rates have dropped even lower during the conflict. In 2022, numbers were partly sustained by pregnancies from 2021, Hladun told Ukrainian media earlier this year. In 2023, some couples had children in the hope the war would end. But in 2024, when it became clear peace was not imminent, the birth rate fell sharply. It now stands at 0.9 children per woman, a record low, and far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the population (for comparison, the total fertility rate in the EU is 1.38).
Recently, the Ukrainian government developed strategies aimed at tackling the problem, including affordable childcare and housing. These policies, however, rely on local authorities rather than centralised funding – meaning projects often don't take off, according to Hladun.
As long as would-be mothers and children remain exposed to the dangers of war, state-level efforts might not find much success, he concedes.
In this context, Ukraine's population decline should be seen as a security threat. Russia is simply demographically much larger, he argues. And in this sense, it has more resources for war.
Daria captures the sentiment of uncertainty: Planning a future feels fragile, almost naive... this uncertainty is painful, but it becomes a part of everyday life. I've come to accept that I might stay alone not because I want to, but because war reshapes what feels possible. Learning to live with that is, in itself, a form of survival.
