The Atlantic: Ukraine’s Quiet Depopulation Crisis

Ukraine nevertheless stands apart. It is still a nation at war, yet in a survey last year, 55 percent of residents named mass emigration as the greatest threat to their country—the UN estimates that Ukraine could lose nearly a fifth of its population by 2050. And whereas politicians in Eastern Europe typically invoke demographic decline as a justification for conservative policies such as restricting abortion rights and providing financial bonuses for large families, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to reverse brain drain by improving his country’s economy and rule of law. In December, he announced a program to draw young Ukrainians back from abroad with promises of preferential loans to start their own businesses upon their return. [...]

Why young Ukrainians leave places like this is no mystery. The country is Europe’s second-poorest, beset by corruption and low living standards, and it shares a border with the European Union. Furthermore, a war with Russia-backed separatists still wages in the east, and has displaced 2 million people, many internally. (Ukraine’s depopulation problem is also tied to high mortality rates: According to Ella Libanova, the director of the Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies at the National Academy of Sciences, 30 percent of 20-year-old Ukrainian men won’t make it to their 60th birthday, thanks in large part to alcohol abuse and road accidents.)

So Ukraine’s limited ability to stem emigration is not entirely an issue of political will. Rather, it is a consequence of the country’s place in the global economy: as a reservoir of migrant labor. In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, the majority of first-time EU residence permits were given to Ukrainians, the lion’s share of whom moved to neighboring Poland. Remittances from overseas made up more than 11 percent of Ukraine’s GDP. That Ukrainians are heading to Poland and elsewhere in Central Europe also highlights the absurdity of these countries’ negative rhetoric toward prospective immigrants: “One of the paradoxes of [Central European] anti-migrant rhetoric toward the south … is that it’s only possible because those countries have benefited heavily from migration from the east,” Alexander Clarkson, a European-studies lecturer at King’s College London, told me.

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New Statesman: The pattern of life might return to normality but the crisis will change our politics and culture forever

On 11 March, MPs of all parties crowded in the Commons chamber to hear Rishi Sunak deliver his first Budget as chancellor, despite one of their number, the health minister Nadine Dorries, having already been diagnosed with Covid-19. And six days later, Boris Johnson would tell both MPs and the British public to avoid unnecessary social contact in order to combat the disease.

That recklessness reflects another neglected political truth: that politics is a social business. The major reason Jeremy Corbyn (who was elected to the Commons in 1983) was able to become Labour leader was that many MPs who did not share his politics had over the years come to like him because of his kindness and willingness to drop everything to turn up at an event, give a short speech and support his colleagues. [...]

Yet far more alarming than the fall in Tube passenger numbers is that the numbers commuting by bus have only fallen by 10 per cent. The nine-point gap isn’t because people who travel by bus are healthier or less prone to listen to government advice. It’s because, on the whole, those who travel by bus are less wealthy and less able to work from home. No amount of well-meaning advice from the government or conscientious action by the rest of London will matter if the capital’s poorest feel compelled to continue working and to circulate, though they might be ill or emerging from a long period of near-quarantine.

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SciShow: The Wild Reasons Many Older People Wake Up So Early

You might think your grandma who wakes up at 4am just needs less sleep than younger people. Not so! Studies suggest there are some bizarre reasons older people rise at the crack of dawn, including something called brain sand!

PolyMatter: The Politics of Coronavirus