The Ukraine war
has triggered a massive humanitarian crisis with millions of people, the bulk
of them women and children, turned refugees. The massive movement has already significantly
altered the populations of several eastern European nations, including Poland,
Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia. For these countries, the influx of
refugees presents an opportunity to transform from an outmigration country to
an immigration one.

Poland, the
country which has received the greatest number of Ukrainian refugees, has seen
itself transformed. Polish capital Warsaw has seen its population expand by 17%
in a matter of weeks, according to United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR).

While this demographic
shift has come as a boon for some nations, it has come as a shock for several.
Moldova, which has received 400,000 refugees, is battling a sudden population
increase of 15%. In Poland, the number of Ukrainians has returned to what it
was before the second world war, when Ukrainians formed a sizeable majority.

Other European
nations with big Ukrainian diasporas, such as Italy, Germany and France are
also taking in large numbers of refugees, according to the UN refugee agency.
Nearly 1.5 million refugees have moved to these three nations.

Austria’s population,
in the first three months of this year, rose by half a percent to over 9
million. Around 83% of the growth can be attributed to Ukrainian immigration.

For Ukraine, however,
the refugee crisis is a demographic disaster. Nearly 25% of the country’s
population has been forced to move within the country. If the war is short,
many of those who have left the country are expected to be able to return. A
long war, like the Bosnian war which raged from 1992 to 1995, may see fewer
people return.

In Russia, the
birth rate has been falling for a while, even though Vladimir Putin has been
incentivising women to have more children. With educated Russian’s leaving the
country in droves, Putin’s hope to boost fertility rate from 1.5 to 1.7 will
probably remain unrealised.