Sitting in a wine bar in Kyiv on a Saturday night, Daria, 34, opens a dating app, scrolls, then puts her phone away.
After spending more than a decade in committed relationships she's been single for a long time. "I haven't had a proper date since before the war," she says.
Four years of war have forced Ukrainians to rethink nearly every aspect of daily life. Increasingly that includes decisions about relationships and parenthood – and these choices are, in turn, shaping the future of a country in which both marriage and birth rates are falling.
Millions of Ukrainian women who left at the start of the 2022 full-scale invasion have now built lives and relationships abroad. Hundreds of thousands of men are absent too, either deployed in the army or living outside the country.
For those women who stayed, the prospect of meeting somebody to start a family feels increasingly remote.
