KYIV: Ukraine’s central bank has predicted emigration levels this year will be far higher than previously forecast, largely due to power cuts caused by Russian attacks on energy facilities.
“The worsening of the energy situation and slow normalization of the economic conditions will lead to a larger outflow of migrants abroad in 2024 and 2025 than previously expected,” the National Bank of Ukraine said in a report released Thursday.
It predicted there would be a net outflow of 400,000 people this year, while the outflow in 2024 would be 300,000 people.
In April, the central bank had forecast that a net 200,000 Ukrainians would leave this year but a net 400,000 would return from abroad next year.
The higher emigration is due to “significant destruction of the Ukrainian energy system, which is accompanied by long power outages and increased risks for the (winter) heating season,” the central bank said.
Beyond the inability to heat homes, power cuts reduce economic activity and demand for workers, further stimulating migration, it said.
The economy has also been hit by millions of young men leaving the country, some doing so illegally to avoid mobilization, although their exact numbers are hard to quantify.
The bank now predicts that there will be a net return of 400,000 in 2026 but the process will be “gradual” as Ukrainians get more accustomed to living abroad while conditions at home will be harder than previously anticipated.
The report cites UN figures from July this year that there are now 6.6 million Ukrainians living abroad, up almost 240,000 since the start of the year.
The total population of Ukraine is the subject of debate since the last census was in 2001 — giving a figure of over 48 million.
There has since been a low birth rate and high death rate and the country has lost swathes of territory to Russian annexation and occupation since 2014.
Estimates for the population as of 2023 vary from 28 million to 34 million, down from 41 million before the war began.
Power cuts will force more people to leave Ukraine: central bank
https://arab.news/nbk26
Power cuts will force more people to leave Ukraine: central bank
- The worsening of the energy situation and slow normalization of the economic conditions will lead to a larger outflow of migrants abroad in 2024 and 2025
- The higher emigration is due to “significant destruction of the Ukrainian energy system,” the central bank saidBLA
Trump insists he struck Iran on his own terms
- “We are now a nation divided between those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance,” Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X.
- Rubio himself doubled down on Tuesday after meeting with US House and Senate members, while insisting that “No, I told you this had to happen anyway”
WASHINGTON, United States: President Donald Trump and his team scrambled Tuesday to reclaim the narrative on why he decided to attack Iran, after his top diplomat suggested the US struck only after learning of an imminent Israeli strike.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio alarmed Democrats — who say only Congress can declare war — as well as many of Trump’s MAGA supporters on Monday when he said: “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.”
“We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters.
Administration officials quickly backpedalled, insisting Trump authorized the strikes because Tehran was not seriously negotiating an accord on limiting its nuclear ambitions, and the United States needed to destroy Iran’s missile capabilities.
“No, Marco Rubio Didn’t Claim That Israel Dragged Trump into War with Iran,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted Tuesday on X.
At an Oval Office meeting later with Germany’s chancellor, Trump went further, saying that “Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they (Iran) were going to attack first. And I didn’t want that to happen.”
“So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”
- Had to happen? -
Rubio himself doubled down on Tuesday after meeting with US House and Senate members, while insisting that “No, I told you this had to happen anyway.”
“The president made a decision. The decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide... behind this ability to conduct an attack.”
Critics seized on the muddied messaging to accuse Trump of precipitating the country into a war without a clear rationale, without informing Congress — and without a clear idea of how it might end.
They noted that just two weeks ago, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed Trump again in Washington to take a hard line, in their seventh meeting since Trump’s return to power last year.
Some Republican allies rallied behind the president, with Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, insisting that “No one pushes or drags Donald Trump anywhere.”
“He acts in the vital national security interest of the United States,” Cotton told the “Fox & Friends” morning show.
But as crucial US midterm elections approach that could see Republicans lose their congressional majority, Trump risks shedding supporters who had welcomed his pledge to end foreign military interventions.
“We are now a nation divided between those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a top former Trump ally and a major figure in the populist and isolationist hard right, posted on X.
