RURAL AREAS OF UKRAINE: CURRENT STATE, PROBLEMS, SOLUTIONS

Abstract

Rural areas occupy a special place in the socio-economic life of Ukraine. They are home to a third of the population of our state and account for a larger share of its area. The importance of these territories is enhanced by their exceptional contribution to the formation of the foundations of food security and the expansion of the country’s export potential. These and other factors make the development of rural areas one of the main priorities of the state policy of Ukraine aimed at raising the living standards of the rural population, increasing the efficiency of the functioning of the agro-industrial complex, improving the state of the environment and improving the quality of human capital. However, more than 30 years of Ukraine’s independence have not brought the expected increase in well-being to ordinary peasants. According to the processed data of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, it has been established that rural areas are in a catastrophic state: the ecological condition of natural resources is deteriorating, engineering and social infrastructure, and the system of social services have fallen into disrepair. From year to year there is a decrease in the number of medical institutions and enterprises of household services, communication offices, schools and especially preschool institutions. The construction of social facilities and housing for rural youth has practically stopped. The social infrastructure has been practically destroyed, and those institutions of social and cultural purpose, which are still functioning at least somehow, are in survival conditions. Migration processes and the depopulation of the rural population have increased sharply. The agro-ecological condition of soils, the quality of agricultural products grown in rural settlement areas, and the quality of drinking water are deteriorating. The destruction and decline of rural areas is the result of insufficient attention of state management bodies to their problems. Today, 30% of Ukraine’s population lives in rural areas and there are 28,369 villages, while in 1990, 32.6% of the population lived in rural areas and there were 28,845 villages. For the period 1990–2021, 476 rural settlements have disappeared. The demographic situation in Ukraine has received negative changes, it remains especially acute in rural areas, and during the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the demographic situation has generally become catastrophic.