There are three main factors that will shape the outcome of each scenario described above.
Sociological situation
Ukraine is deeply traumatized by the war. Official data on military deaths and serious injuries remain classified but US intelligence estimated in August 2023 that Ukraine had suffered military losses of 70,000 killed and 100,000–120,000 injured. These deaths were on top of verified cases of 10,000 civilians killed and a further nearly 20,000 injured. The real figures are likely to be much higher. In Mariupol alone, over 20,000 civilians are believed to have died in the Russian siege. In addition, around 19,000 children are believed to have been deported to Russia and subjected to forcible de-Ukrainianization.
At the same time, by the second anniversary of the full-scale war, over 14 million Ukrainians had been forced to leave their homes, with around half that number abroad, mainly women and children, and a similar level of internally displaced persons. Sociological data show 80 per cent of the population experiencing mental health impacts of the war, including sleeping problems, anxiety and depression. Families torn apart, job losses, inflation, financial worries and other forms of stress are taking their toll on society. According to one leading Ukrainian sociologist, the divorce rate is high and set to increase while many Ukrainians worry about the stability of the state and its ability to continue paying salaries and pensions and provide social services. The World Health Organization and Ukraine’s Ministry of Health have estimated that between 10 million and 15 million Ukrainians will require specialist psychological help.
Sociological data show 80 per cent of the population experiencing mental health impacts of the war, including sleeping problems, anxiety and depression.
Mental health issues in Ukraine have long carried a stigma and there is no culture of consulting psychologists for support. Ukraine’s Ministry of Veteran Affairs lacks experience to help care for the estimated 1.2 million soldiers who have been in combat since 2014. A major effort is underway to change this because of increasing awareness of the problem of post-traumatic stress disorder. Ukrainian Ministry of Health data show that increasing numbers of people are seeking treatment for mental health problems. In 2023, primary care doctors treated 135,000 patients suffering from mental disorders. In the first seven months of 2024, 277,000 people had consulted doctors about their mental health, among them over 42,000 children under 17.
Caring for military veterans who have suffered serious physical injuries is also a major problem because of limited resources and facilities. Those former soldiers trying to access help from the state and struggling to find it are already an angry and frustrated constituency that cannot easily be reabsorbed into civilian life. If not adequately cared for, this group could become a threat to social stability by acting outside the law to protect their interests. The absorption of some of the Afghantsy, the veterans of the USSR’s campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980s, into the criminal underworld is a telling example of the potential dangers ahead.
Social polarization has taken place and will inevitably deepen as long as the war continues. Those who left the country have had different experiences from those who have stayed. Those living in the west of the country have experienced war differently from those in the south and east. As is usually the case in war, those who have fought on the front line have a particularly deep and personal experience of war that they cannot easily share with others who have not been through the same. Different personal perceptions of the war and its impact will naturally give rise to problems of communication and the formation of resentment. Fighting-age men who left the country to avoid military service, or simply did not come back after the war started, may find it hard to reintegrate if they return because of the bitterness towards them.
A factor of trauma that is not yet fully understood but demands attention is the issue of the estimated 19,000 deported children noted above. This example of Russia’s efforts to extinguish Ukrainian identity could become a focus for mobilizing Ukrainians to continue fighting and to force Russia to pay for the damage it has caused to the Ukrainian nation. The issuing of an arrest warrant for Putin by the International Criminal Court for the war crime of unlawful deportation of children to Russia provides Ukrainians with a strong pretext to keep the issue alive and to insist on the need to bring the Russian president to justice. One opinion poll conducted in 2024 showed that respondents prioritized prosecuting Russian war crimes over reparations in potential negotiations.
Among those Ukrainians who have left and those who have stayed, there are major concerns about children’s education. The combined effect on schools of the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war has left many parents worried about whether their children will be adequately prepared for working life. This factor may in turn discourage the reuniting of families in cases where mothers have moved abroad with children. In 2022, two million children were among the refugees to leave Ukraine, many of whom were expected to stay abroad, contributing to the country’s brain drain. However, the situation facing refugees abroad is sometimes highly unfavourable. One analysis indicates that during the 2022–23 academic year, almost half of Ukrainian school-age refugees abroad did not have access to the education system of their host countries for a variety of administrative and other reasons. The long-term effects of impaired educational experiences on the economy are likely to be considerable.
While Ukrainians have pulled together to fight the war, galvanized by the 25 per cent of society that is active and self-organizing in crisis situations in the absence of a strong state, preserving this unity up to and through the ‘frozen conflict’ scenario will be a significant challenge. Strengthening and renewing the extraordinary resilience shown since February 2022 is a pre-condition for the country’s survival. This depends on implementing a wide range of reforms to address the country’s poor governance and achieve sustainable growth by improving the business environment and attracting investment.
Preserving social stability together with faith in the future will be the top priorities over the coming years so that Ukraine halts or even reverses its brain drain and restores as much of its labour force as possible. Inevitably, when the true scale of the human losses becomes known, there will be a backlash in parts of society against the West for failing to show the same level of bravery as Ukrainians in countering a common enemy. This has the potential to complicate ‘frozen conflict’ politics and by extension the progress on delivering painful reforms required by European allies as part of the EU accession process.
Economy
The war has had a grievous impact on the economy that is likely to take decades to overcome. The Kyiv School of Economics recorded in October 2023 that the direct reported damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure since February 2023 had reached $151 billion at replacement cost. This included over 167,000 housing units at a cost of nearly $60 billion. Airports, civil airfields, bridges and over 25,000 km of roads have sustained damage at a total cost of $36 billion. Damage to industry was calculated at $11.4 billion. The analysis noted the extensive damage to educational facilities with over 3,500 buildings destroyed or damaged at a cost of $10 billion. The healthcare sector also suffered badly with damage or destruction recorded in 384 hospitals and other facilities worth nearly $3 billion.
Analysing the period from February 2022 to December 2023, the World Bank together with the government of Ukraine, the EU and the UN estimated that the war had caused direct damage to housing and infrastructure of up to $152 billion. Furthermore, 10 per cent of the country’s housing stock had been damaged or destroyed, leaving millions homeless. The analysis estimated that Ukraine’s reconstruction and recovery would cost over $486 billion over a 10-year period, and pointed to the broader problem of impoverishment created by war with the elderly population and children disproportionately affected. Meanwhile, 9 per cent of households reported in November 2023 that they had run out of food in a 30-day period. As the World Bank’s 2023 report noted, the war caused GDP to slump by over 29 per cent in 2022, forcing over 13.5 million people to leave their homes and pushing 7.1 million people into poverty, reversing 15 years of gains in poverty reduction. The damage, loss and needs of the different regions of Ukraine varied considerably in the bank’s analysis, with six ‘frontline regions’ accounting for the lion’s share of the three categories.
The war has caused GDP to slump by over 29 per cent in 2022, forcing over 13.5 million people to leave their homes and pushing 7.1 million people into poverty, reversing 15 years of gains in poverty reduction.
Russia has heavily targeted Ukraine’s energy sector with missiles and drones. The World Bank analysis estimated in December 2023 that the sector has suffered damage of $10.6 billion since February 2022, not including $2.1 billion of damage to district heating systems. In June 2024, Zelenskyy said that Russia had destroyed 80 per cent of Ukraine’s thermal energy generation and one-third of its hydropower capacity. While the country has benefited from warmer than usual winters since the start of the full-scale war and the remarkable ability of its engineers to keep heat and power supplied to most of the population, air defence systems supplied by Western allies have provided only limited protection. As the CEO of Ukraine’s largest electricity supplier warned in March 2024, Ukraine risked losing the energy war if Western partners did not replenish supplies of air defence missiles. The strain of diverting around half the state budget to defence (30 per cent of GDP) and supporting the rest of government spending with a combination of war bonds and foreign assistance is going to leave the country heavily indebted and a legacy of warped social investment. In addition, the ‘frozen conflict’ scenario would require Ukraine to commit high levels of economic and human resources to defence in preparation for the likely next stage of the war.
Demographic trends are highly discouraging for the economic outlook. Even before the war, Ukraine had a rapidly ageing society in common with many European countries. According to 2023 data, the population in the unoccupied areas of Ukraine had fallen to around 33 million. In 1991, the population in Ukraine’s Soviet borders was 51 million. A stable security situation leading to sustainable reconstruction and long-term economic growth would halt dramatic further decline by encouraging significant numbers of refugees (estimated to be 70 per cent women) to return. Yet even in the most optimistic case, assuming restoration of the 1991 borders and rapid economic recovery, the population is on track to decline to 31 million by 2035.
As noted above, recovery and reconstruction will be a long-term process that will be heavily influenced by the quality of the security environment, including Ukraine’s ability to export through the Black Sea. The opening of a new export channel along the western coast of the Black Sea was the most important achievement of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive and immediately contributed to improved economic performance by restoring desperately needed export capacity for the agricultural and metallurgical sectors. While the UN-brokered grain initiative allowed some exports to leave the country through the Black Sea, the export of iron and manganese ores fell by nearly 46 per cent in 2022 and could not be compensated by alternative routes, including by the Danube. Even if it has currently withdrawn the Black Sea Fleet to safer waters, Russia is still limiting the volume of Black Sea exports because some ports, including Mykolaiv, remain blockaded.
De-mining is set to be a major challenge. Landmines and explosive remnants of war affect an estimated 29 per cent of Ukraine’s territory, contaminating 10 per cent of agricultural land by April 2023 and preventing the sowing of 5 million hectares of land. The south and east of the country are disproportionately affected.
Those regions and communities in the west of the country less impacted by the war are likely to recover more quickly, not least because investors concerned about future security risks will regard them as safer and be more inclined to invest there. This, in turn, will have broader economic, social and, ultimately, political consequences if the population shift from the east to the west of the country becomes permanent and perhaps even expands.
Politics and governance
The key challenge facing Ukraine will be to restore the election process suspended under martial law. The constitution requires parliamentary and presidential elections to be held within six months of the lifting of martial law. For some of the president’s team, this will be an unpleasant prospect because they will risk losing the considerable power and prestige they accrued during the war. Suspicions will abound that those individuals will seek to preserve their influence. Protecting themselves against criminal investigation of their activities while in office is likely to be a high priority. While there is no certainty that Zelenskyy will wish to campaign for a fresh term, there is already widespread speculation in the Ukrainian elites that key members of his administration are preparing to become Ukraine’s leading business owners when the war ends. They are well positioned to redistribute assets nationalized as part of the war effort and to continue to attack the positions of the leading financial-industrial groups that owned or indirectly influenced large swathes of the economy up until the start of the ‘big’ war in 2022.
Although some of these elites have lost influence because of the war, it is by no means certain that they will allow others to encroach on their interests and leave the scene quickly or easily. Nor is it a foregone conclusion that rent-seeking practices will disappear despite the need for economic re-regulation of industries to create greater competition as part of the process of adapting to EU membership criteria. Much will depend on the political environment that emerges and the extent to which it is conducive to limiting the influence of informal patronal networks that have defined Ukrainian politics since 1991. The close monitoring of reconstruction funds by international partners and Ukrainian civil society is likely to be an important factor in limiting the usual schemes for embezzling public money.
Despite martial law that has effectively eliminated the separation of powers between the executive and legislature and made traditional media the mouthpiece of government in its reporting of the war, political life in Ukraine has continued. The issue of mobilization, for example, has been a subject of lively debate in society and there was considerable discussion of the growing influence of General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander of the armed forces, before Zelenskyy replaced him with General Oleksandr Syrskyi in February 2024. Some commentators have drawn attention to the fact that measures adopted in response to emergencies in Western democracies have not always been phased out when the emergency has passed and that instead of moving to liberal democracy, Ukraine might shift to conservative autocracy. However, there are strong grounds to argue against this possibility given the value attached by Ukrainian society to basic democratic freedoms and European norms, as well as its enduring support for the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration.
There is a broad consensus among observers of Ukrainian politics that the war is going to create a different political environment as new players take to the stage from the volunteer movement and the armed forces. It is too early to identify specific names of individuals who may define the political era that follows the lifting of martial law, but as noted above, it would be premature to dismiss Zelenskyy as a player should Ukraine succeed in stabilizing the situation on the battlefield and recover even a modest amount of its territory. For political purposes, this would count as ‘victory’. According to one respected poll, in June 2024, his personal rating was 54 per cent, down from 71 per cent in December 2023. Although no other politician in the poll could match this level of support, it was notable that the charismatic governor of Mykolaiv region, Vitalii Kim, enjoyed 46 per cent support, while the TV presenter and fundraiser Serhiy Prytula and the mayor of Kyiv, Vitalii Klitschko, were both on 41 per cent. A later poll indicated that 63 per cent of respondents expressed confidence in the presidency, making it the most trusted central institution. However, if Zelenskyy were forced to accept a disadvantageous truce or peace deal, it is not hard to see how his support might evaporate, and political rivals would try to exploit the situation.
According to one respected poll, in June 2024, Zelenskyy’s personal rating was 54 per cent, down from 71 per cent in December 2023.
It should be remembered that Zelenskyy shot to power in 2019 thanks to popular disillusionment with Petro Poroshenko’s presidency that not only stabilized the situation in Donbas after 2015 but also implemented a set of significant reforms in different areas – including banking, decentralization and energy – and largely acquiesced in the creation of civil society-driven initiatives to establish new anti-corruption bodies and raise transparency requirements for public officials. Despite also achieving modest levels of economic growth, Poroshenko was trounced by Zelenskyy, a political novice, in the second round of the presidential election.
The desire of the Ukrainian electorate to see new faces is likely to remain. It should not be forgotten that Zelenskyy’s presidency was facing severe difficulties by the middle of 2021 as voters became convinced that he could not match his pre-election rhetoric to bring peace and eradicate systemic corruption. At that time, one poll indicated only 21 per cent of voters would support him if elections were held then, while Poroshenko enjoyed the backing of over 10 per cent of voters.
If Ukrainian politics was highly volatile before the war, the situation that follows when hostilities cease will be far more unpredictable. Ukrainian analysts broadly agree that new players from the military or those who have served in the army during the war, as well as representatives from the volunteer movement, are going to command respect in society and will be well positioned to make political careers. Individuals to watch include General Zaluzhnyi, a very popular figure in society who, as noted above, was removed from his position in February 2024 and sent to the UK as ambassador after a rift with Zelenskyy, as well as Dmytro Razumkov (chairman of parliament 2019–21) who appeared to have a promising political career ahead of him before falling out with the Servant of the People Party.
Tensions between the central authorities in Kyiv and the regions, visible since the start of the war, will inevitably continue to be a factor of political life as regional leaders fight for resources and freedom of action. No longer constrained by martial law, some regions may act aggressively to assert their interests making the governance of the country particularly challenging. Klitschko, who had disagreements with Zelenskyy before the war and has increasingly spoken out against the president’s wartime leadership, including warning of authoritarianism, is likely to be a player on the national political stage.
Recent polling suggests that reducing corruption levels in public life has become an even higher priority for Ukrainian society. Significantly, 63 per cent of Ukrainians say that the second-highest issue for them behind the war is corruption. They rank frustration with corruption ahead of dissatisfaction with low salaries and pensions. This view is consistent across all regions of the country. It is partially explained by the fact that so many citizens and companies have been donating their own money to the war effort. Another poll indicates that a future leader’s commitment to fight corruption will be more important for Ukrainians than their understanding of how to rebuild the economy and is second only to the ability to unite and heal society.
