Frontline communities have called on the authorities to prevent the mass influx of migrants into Ukraine
The Association of Frontline Cities and Communities of Ukraine has appealed to the government and the Verkhovna Rada, urging them to prevent the large-scale recruitment of foreign workers and to focus government policy on providing employment for Ukrainians.
This was reported by the Association of Frontline Cities and Communities.
The appeal was supported by representatives of communities from the Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, and Zaporizhzhia regions.
The association’s chairman, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov, stated that the labor shortage should not be addressed by massively importing cheap labor, as this could perpetuate the country’s technological backwardness.
According to him, if the issue is attracting foreign workers, this should be a limited process involving foreign students who have already adapted to life in Ukraine, or highly qualified specialists for complex engineering and technological projects.
The association emphasizes that there is an imbalance in the labor market: some sectors face a labor shortage, yet at the same time, thousands of Ukrainians—including internally displaced persons, older adults, and residents of frontline territories—cannot find work.
The association calls for the introduction of retraining programs and employment support for people aged 50+, young people, veterans, and displaced persons.
Separately, the authors of the appeal emphasized the need to create conditions for the return of Ukrainians from abroad. According to them, the state should not send a signal to citizens that they are being replaced.
Among the demands made of the government are stricter controls over the issuance of work permits for foreigners, preventing the simplification of procedures for the mass recruitment of migrant workers, and the development of a new national employment strategy.
The Verkhovna Rada was urged to hold parliamentary hearings on the social, economic, and demographic consequences of potential mass labor migration and to enshrine in law the priority of employment for Ukrainian citizens.
It should be noted that Lidiia Tkachenko, a leading research fellow at the M.V. Ptukha Institute of Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and a candidate of economic sciences, believes that labor migrants are unlikely to come to Ukraine in the near future.
Large migration flows and declining birth rates during a full-scale war are exacerbating the demographic crisis in Ukraine year after year.
