ONE CAN'T LEAVE, ONE CAN'T STAY. LOSSES OF UKRAINIAN HUMAN CAPITAL DUE TO MIGRATION

Abstract

In the scientific community and market economy conditions, the role and importance of human capital are increasingly recognized. This concept reflects not only a new approach to analyzing the role of a person as a worker but also the growing importance for the formation of a high level of a country’s human capital, which determines its competitiveness in the world. The full-scale war initiated by Russia against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has created new threats to the formation and realization of Ukrainian human capital: missile strikes, power outages, physical destruction of people, child abduction, and the processes of internal displacement of the population and forced migration are reaching a new level. Current problems are the rates of forced migration, which are gaining threatening proportions for the formation of a high level of human capital of Ukraine and the national economy in general. The purpose of the article is to study the losses of human capital during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the context of migration. The article describes the current statistics of forced migration of Ukrainians abroad. The opportunities and threats for Ukraine’s human capital arising from migration processes in conditions of economic-political instability are presented. The phenomenon of child abduction by the aggressor country is of great importance, in particular, the article draws the attention of the public and political figures to this problem. The change in brain drain processes in states that are included in the anti-rating of countries characterized by mass labor migration of the population has been studied. The dynamics of changes in the quality indicators of human capital have been studied and a comparative analysis of the quality characteristics of Ukraine’s human capital and neighboring countries has been carried out. The importance of the work of state authorities during the war was emphasized and general recommendations were given, which relate to ensuring a sufficient level of funding in the fields of education and science and health care, supporting migrants and protecting their rights, as well as facilitating their return to Ukraine. The results obtained in the course of the study determine their value for the formation of a high level of human capital in Ukraine.