The United Nations estimates that since Russia’s initial invasion, Ukraine’s population has decreased by 10 million.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, causing a migration and a sharp drop in birth rates, the country’s population has decreased by about eight million people, the UN reported Tuesday. The U.N. Population Fund stated that although a census had not been conducted, it was evident that the population of war-torn Ukraine had drastically decreased.

According to Florence Bauer, regional director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia for the United Nations Population Fund, “the population of Ukraine has decreased by an estimated 10 million since 2014 and by an estimated eight million since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.”

According to estimates from the national statistics office, the population of Ukraine was around 45 million in 2014, the year when Russia invaded, occupied, and annexed Crimea.

Citing a combination of official and UNFPA data, it claimed that the population had fallen to 43 million by February 2022, when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and that it has since fallen to barely 35 million.

Bauer told reporters in Geneva that “a combination of factors” were to blame for the sharp drop.

Ukraine had one of the lowest birth rates in Europe even before to the war, and like many Eastern European nations, it had experienced a large exodus of young people seeking better prospects outside, she added.

However, she noted that the birth rate has dropped to about one child per woman in the two and a half years since the full-scale invasion, while about 6.7 million people have left the nation as refugees.

That’s among the lowest in the world,” she added, emphasizing that this was far less than the average replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman that is required to keep the population at a healthy level.

Bauer added that there are also “several tens of thousands of casualties (from the war), which of course add to the equation.”

U.S. officials estimated in August 2023 that at least 70,000 Ukrainian service men had been killed, although neither Russia nor Ukraine had disclosed the number of casualties since Russia began its full-scale assault in 2022. Along the extensive front line that runs directly across the country’s east, Russia has since made small but steady progress.