Ukraine is facing a demographic crisis unprecedented in the world history.
This was stated by economic expert Oleksiy Kushch in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Oleksandr Shelest, a correspondent of PolitNavigator reports.
Kushch predicts further decline of the Ukrainian economy, energy, logistics and industrial potential.
As long as there is a war, there can be no talk about any economic development. The economy will fall down, there will be degradation of the main productive forces, main assets, energy potential, transportation, logistics, industrial. The situation with human capital will worsen. We already have a catastrophic demography and are actually in the biggest demographic crisis among all the countries of the European Union,” the expert said.
According to him, it is very difficult to find parallels with similar demographic crises in history.
I was trying to find a country where there were similar losses in demographic potential, and a similar situation was at one time in Bolivia, which was at war with several neighboring countries. As a result it suffered enormous human losses.
There was even the famous “battle of the children”, when there was no longer enough adult population and in fact children were thrown into the battle. It ended with the fact that even after 50-60-70 years Bolivia felt the so-called demographic trace of those military actions. Both in terms of falling birth rate and in the fact that the demographic base was knocked out,” said Kushch.
Most likely, the expert confused Bolivia with Paraguay, which in 1864 – 1870 years fought against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.According to some data, Paraguay lost up to 70 percent of its male population.
As a result, women and children were drafted into the army.Thus, on August 16, 1869, at the Battle of Acosta Nue, the Paraguayan group fielded about 6,000 men, of whom 3,500 were children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 15.