Millions of Ukrainians have left their country and hundreds of thousands of men are dead and wounded at the front. Now, employers and big capital are already suggesting that the “only solution” is for mass immigration of Third-World migrants. This means that after the war is over, many of the soldiers will come home to a Ukraine that will be rapidly transformed under their feet.
Currently, every 10 Ukrainian women give birth to only 7 children on average, while to maintain the population this number should be at least 22. Without this, Ukraine’s population will continue to decline, and the previously mentioned population level of 40-50 million will become unattainable.
Vasyl Voskobojnik, president of the Ukrainian Association of Foreign Employment Agencies, says the population decline can no longer be offset by simply increasing the birth rate, and immigration from Third-World countries is the only solution, reports Magyar Nemzet.
Workforce gaps are a serious issue. There are currently about 29 million people living in Ukraine, give or take 1 million. According to the National Bank of Ukraine, another 200,000 people left the country in 2024, further worsening the labor shortage. At least 8.2 million workers would be needed for the future recovery of the Ukrainian economy.
Voskobojnik says the Ukrainian government must develop a migration policy by 2026 that focuses on reducing this shortage.
Even before the war, Ukraine had suffered the most drastic population decline in Europe. Due to high mortality, low birth rates, and emigration, the population was decreasing by hundreds of thousands of people each year.
After the outbreak of war, millions more fled or were forced across the border by the advancing Russian army. A significant proportion of the working-age men were conscripted into the army, many of whom have now died or been crippled by battlefield injuries.
According to Voskobojnik, Ukraine can mostly attract labor from countries where the standard of living is even lower than in Ukraine. Many of the working-class Ukrainian men who survive the war may therefore see the labor power they could have wielded after the war evaporate as an influx of even poorer migrants enters the country and drives down wages.
This means that immigrants may arrive mainly from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, as well as North African and Central Asian countries.
This could lead to further tensions in Ukrainian society, as many of the soldiers return to a society where they have essentially been replaced. In previous wars, soldiers mostly returned home to their families, their daughters, and sons to rebuild. Often, peace brought population booms and more boys, known as the “returning soldier effect,” which would help rebuild the population’s decimated male population.
Following World War II, there was some level of such migration into Germany, mainly through Turkish guest workers. These workers were originally supposed to come to the country, earn money to help rebuild, and then head home. Instead, they have remained in Germany for generations, and by many metrics, remain one of the most poorly integrated migrant groups in Germany, even after generations.
As Remix News previously noted, a report from the Berlin-based Institute for Population and Development “found that immigrants of Turkish origin were the least successful of all immigrant groups in the labor market and they are often jobless, the percentage of housewives is high and many are dependent on welfare… The state of Saarland was found to have the worst record — 45 percent of its Turks had no educational qualification of any kind.”
Unlike Germany following World War II, Ukraine is unlikely to experience a massive baby boom. Many soldiers there returned home to women who remained in the country despite the hardship they faced. In Ukraine, child-bearing women fled the country in tremendous numbers, so it is unclear what these soldiers will be returning to. Furthermore, these men may now be competing with male newcomers from across the Third World, which means the people Ukrainians fought and killed for when they left may not be the people they come home to.
These men may also be coming home to the tensions seen in Western Europe. These new migrants come from vastly different cultures than Ukraine, and unlike Western Europe, Ukrainians are highly ethnocentric and racist, meaning that these newcomers may not be embraced by society, leading to further divisions.
Numerous NGOs and non-profits had complained for years that Ukrainians were racist and unwelcoming to foreigners.
“Although relatively few people of African origin reside in Ukraine, the rate of violence against this group has been extraordinary. African refugees, students, visitors, and the handful of citizens and permanent residents of African origin have lived under constant threat of harassment and violence,” according to Hate Crime Survey from 2008.
Ukraine always featured high numbers of neo-Nazi groups and skinhead football hooligans, and brutal attacks have taken place in Ukraine even before the war. Many of the most elite Ukrainian units, such as Azov, adhere to neo-Nazi belief structures.
For those hoping for a multicultural utopia in Ukraine after the war, some may be hoping that the incredible numbers of the young Ukrainians who fought for units such as Azov never actually come home. In other words, these men were useful for fighting the Russians, but perhaps not so useful for the multicultural society employers and international capital are hoping for after the war.
Although few have voiced their opinion about what immigration will look like in Ukraine after the war, others have also openly called for a massive demographic transformation.
“After the end of the conflict, Ukraine may begin to be populated with Africans and Afghans in order to prevent a demographic catastrophe,” reads an interview in Focus magazine with Vladimir Paniotto, director general of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).
Notably, he said that it will be far harder in Ukraine, where people do not have such an open view of migrants as those in Western Europe.
These migrant newcomers will also need adequate housing, wages and a working environment to make them choose Ukraine. However, it is questionable how a country whose economy and state administration are in ruins as a result of war could handle mass immigration from the Third World. Unlike how migration was marketed, many of the migrants who came to Western Europe have ended up draining state coffers through social welfare, education, housing, and integration. In Germany, for instance, foreigners cost the government nearly €50 billion in 2023.
Ukraine also does not have as many resources for integrating migrants as Western states, and as already noted, integration has been far from a success story there. Even groups that have lived there for centuries, such as the Hungarians, are actively discriminated against, even at the government level.
Since Ukraine will mostly be rebuilt using Western funds, it is likely that Americans, Germans, and French people, already hit hard by the costs of mass immigration, will be the ones paying for social welfare and integration for Ukraine’s newly arrived welfare recipients.
As the Russian-Ukrainian war drags on, the chances that Ukrainian refugees and their children, who have been living and working abroad for three years, will not return to economically devastated Ukraine are increasing.
In short, the Great Replacement on steroids may be coming to Ukraine, and employers and international capital are gearing up for the feeding frenzy after the war. Once again, the biggest losers will be Ukrainians.