In October 2022, Russia started mass attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The Kremlin was issuing ultimatums via Dmitriy Peskov: “The leadership of Ukraine has every opportunity to bring the situation [with the strikes on Ukrainian power facilities] back to normal, has every opportunity to resolve the situation in a way that fulfills the demands of the Russian side, and, accordingly, to stop all kinds of the suffering of the local people.”
The Russian army spared no resources — from October 1, 2022, to January 31, 2023, more than 700 missiles of various types and more than 400 Shahed 131/136 drones were fired at Ukraine, which caused serious damage to the electric power system. These attacks became one of the reasons for the mass and often permanent migration of Ukrainians abroad in the fall and winter of 2022-2023 and for significant population movement within the country.
After the November 153 and 234 attacks, the number of departures abroad increased by more than 60% as compared to the previous days. An even greater snowball effect was recorded the day after the missile strike. On November 16 and 17, more than 2.7 times more people left Ukraine than on November 14, and the number of departures on November 24 exceeded the November 22 figure by more than 3.5 times.
Through missile attacks on all regions of Ukraine, the enemy wanted residents of regions far from the area of active hostilities also to seek refuge abroad.
Russian shelling had no less influence on internal migration. In particular, in October 2022, the Russians had regular missile attacks on Zaporizhzhia: there were 17 victims on October 6,5 19 — on October 9,6 and 8 — on October 10.7 When comparing these tragic events with the statistics of departures from Zaporizhzhia and the Zaporizhzhia region, it can be stated that almost a quarter of all departures to other regions registered in four months was during just (!) one week — on October 6–12, 2022.
In this study, we analyzed Ukrainians’ migration trends and scale following the Russian shelling in the joint study by Civil Network OPORA, International Center for Ukrainian Victory, and Vodafone Ukraine telecommunications company. The data for the calculations was provided by the Vodafone mobile operator.
The data presented in this report proves that the strategic objective of the Russian Federation is to depopulate Ukrainian territories to counter resistance.
Moreover, the analysis of deliberate Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure is the priority case of the investigators from the International Criminal Court (ICC) along with the forced deportation of Ukrainian children. This is proved by the statement of Karim Khan, ICC prosecutor, dated March 7, 2023. It is also known12 that on June 1, 2023, Dutch and Czech investigators completed their ICC mission to Ukraine to collect evidence of critical and civilian infrastructure damages.
Read full research on How russian shelling in October 2022-January 2023 affected the migration of the Ukrainian population.
