This information is not true. Ukraine’s Justice Ministry has not published such statistics. According to the department, the number of divorces has overall increased in the country, but not so drastically.
Social media users are distributing a video in which it is stated that «Ukrainian women are massively abandoning their husbands who cannot leave the country» and the divorce rate is 87.3%. «Almost all women who left Ukraine have filed for divorce,» the video claims, citing Ukraine’s Justice Ministry.
Identical comments under the video claiming «it feels like Zelensky’s government is doing everything to completely destroy the institution of marriage and family» also indicate that this is an organized disinformation campaign.
The claim that 87.3% of women who left Ukraine filed for divorce is not true. There are no official statistics on the number of divorces among women who left Ukraine abroad, and neither the Justice Ministry nor other Ukrainian agencies have published them.
The report of the Ministry of Justice for 2024 showed an increase in the number of divorces across the country, but not at the level claimed by the propaganda. In 2024, 34.2 thousand couples divorced, which is 30% more than in 2023. It is important to note that the Ministry of Justice data contains statistics on divorces only through civil registry offices. If there are children under 18 in the family or one of the partners does not agree to divorce, then the divorce process goes through the court, and this is different data.
BBC Ukraine tried to collect real figures by making a request to the judiciary press center. The data obtained showed that the largest number of marriages and divorces was observed back in the first year of the full-scale war. In 2024, according to the Ministry of Justice and the judiciary, Ukrainians entered into 150.2 thousand marriages, and the number of divorces reached 141.8 thousand. But even these data do not reflect statistics on Ukrainians abroad separately, and do not show such figures.
Previously, StopFake also refuted other fakes about Ukrainian refugees, for example, in the stories Manipulation: Ukrainian Refugees Being Evicted from Social Housing in France — Le Monde, Fake: Hotline for Complaints About «Loud Ukrainian Refugees» Set Up in Lisbon, Fake: In the USA, Ukrainian Refugees are Trying to Get Additional Social Benefits by Deception — MSNBC.
