Ross

The 2014 and 2022 Russian invasions have driven Ukraine’s already dire demographic crisis to catastrophic levels. Birth rates are among the lowest in the world, while death rate is the highest. Despite enduring horrific human losses during World War I, the Holodomor, and World War II, Ukraine managed to survive and emerge independent - remarkable resilience. Today, tens of millions of Ukrainians have been displaced, cities reduced to rubble, and millions more are being pushed into poverty. This is Europe's worst humanitarian tragedy of the 21st century. Despite the incredible resilience of the Ukrainian people and their heroic resistance against one of the world’s largest military forces, the collapse of the country and the erasure of its nationhood is a real possibility. Many pro-Ukraine advocates in the West seem to ignore this grim reality, believing Ukraine can hold out indefinitely. Yet, its population has nearly halved, its industry is in ruins, and people are fighting on, impoverished, for the basic right not to be assimilated or exiled to remote corners of Russia. Either Russia’s ambitions are stopped in Ukraine, allowing the country to quickly rebuild like many post-war nations in Europe and Asia, or Ukraine succumbs to becoming a buffer zone between East and West. In the latter scenario, its occupied territories would be plundered, and its population relocated to replenish Russia's human losses: at the cost of Ukraine’s future.