In Ukraine, 79,516 thousand marriages were registered from January through June 2026, which is 16% more than during the same period last year, OpenDataBot reported on July 31, citing data from the Ministry of Justice.
On average, about 13,300 couples got married each month in Ukraine during the first half of the year. At the same time, the total number of marriages for the year may turn out to be significantly higher, as Ukrainians traditionally tend to register their marriages more often in the second half of the year. In 2025, the difference between the two halves of the year was 41%.
The most popular date in the first half of the year was June 26, 2026. On the palindromic date of 06/26/2026, 2,528 thousand couples registered their marriages. Another 1,248 thousand couples got married on February 14, Valentine’s Day.
The increase in the total number of marriages was largely driven by Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Lviv regions. These three regions accounted for more than half of all marriages registered in the country.
One of the main factors was the expansion of remote civil registration: four out of ten marriages in the first half of the year were registered online.
Germany’s GDP rose by 0.2% in the second quarter compared to the previous three months, according to the Federal Statistical Office, which released preliminary data. The consensus forecast by experts, as cited by Trading Economics, had predicted growth of 0.1%.
Germany’s year-over-year economic growth was 0.9%, while experts had expected growth of 0.6%.
In the first quarter, Germany’s GDP increased by 0.4% compared to the previous three months and by 0.7% on an annual basis. The data for January–March were revised upward; previously, growth of 0.3% and 0.4%, respectively, had been reported.
According to preliminary data, exports in April–June rose compared to the first quarter, while consumer and government spending remained weak, and business investment declined.
Final data on Germany’s second-quarter GDP growth will be released on August 25.
Serbia’s real GDP in the third quarter of 2025 increased by 2% in annualized terms, the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia ( SERS) reported. According to seasonally cleansed data, GDP grew by 0.6% compared to the second quarter of this year.
The biggest increase in value added was recorded in industry and water supply sector – 2.9%, as well as in information and communication – 6%.
Decrease was noted in construction, where the output decreased by 11.7 %, and in agriculture, forestry and fishing – by 0.2 %.
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The top ten steel-producing countries at the end of February are as follows: China (81.181 million tons, up 3.5% on Jan-Feb-2023), India (11.799 million tons, up 11.4%), Japan (6.989 million tons, up 1.1%), USA (6.453 million tons, down 1.2%), Russia (5.7 million tons, down 4, 4%), South Korea (5.128 million tons, down 1.5%), Germany (3.124 million tons, up 4.4%), Turkey (3.084 million tons, up 46.6%), Brazil (2.779 million tons, up 13.1%), and Iran (2.239 million tons, up 14.3%).
Cumulatively, steelmaking in February 2024 increased by 3.7% y-o-y to 148.838 million tons in 2023.
In January-February 2024, the top ten steel-producing countries are as follows: China (167.960 million tons, up 1.6% on Jan-Feb-2023), India (24.469 million tons, up 10%), Japan (14.253 million tons, up 0.8%), USA (12.998 million tons, down 2.6%), Russia (11.738 million tons, down 3, 2%), South Korea (10.849 million tons, up 0.2%), Turkey (6.332 million tons, up 34.5%), Germany (6.194 million tons, up 4.6%), Iran (4.842 million tons, up 26.5%) and Brazil (5.506 million tons, up 6.4%).
Overall, in 2M-2024, steelmaking increased by 3% y-o-y to 306.883 million tons.
Ukraine produced 1.076 million tons of steel in 2M-2024, which is 52% higher than in the same period of 2023 (708 thousand tons in 2M-2023). The country is ranked 21st in 2M-2024.
As reported, for 2023 China produced 1 billion 19.080 mln tons at the level of the previous year), India (140.171 mln tons, +11.8%), Japan (86.996 mln tons, -2.5%), USA (80.664 mln tons, +0.2%), Russia (75.8 million tons, +5.6%), South Korea (66.676 million tons, +1.3%), Germany (35.438 million tons, -3.9%), Turkey (33.714 million tons, -4%), Brazil (31.869 million tons, -6.5%), and Iran (31.139 million tons, +1.8%).
In total, 71 countries produced 1 billion 849.734 million tons of steel in 2023, 0.1% less than in 2022.
At the same time, Ukraine produced 6.228 million tons of steel in 2023, which is 0.6% lower than the volumes for 2022. The country is in 22nd place for 2023.
In total, 64 countries produced 1 billion 831.467 million tons of steel in 2022, 4.3% less than in 2021.
The average number of children deprived of parental care has not changed significantly during the full-scale war, the Minister of Social Policy of Ukraine Oksana Zholnovych said.
“In general last year, according to the statistics that we received, the average number of children who are removed has not changed much, it is approximately the same format as every year. It’s about 8,000 to 9,000 children a year,” Zholnovich said on national telethon Tuesday.
The Minister noted that, as a significant number of families with children have gone abroad, identification of difficult life circumstances for them is carried out outside Ukraine, and the Ministry of Social Policy only accompanies this process.
As for the deprivation of parental care, which is associated with new challenges because of the war, there are about 500 such cases today, according to Zholnovych.
The net inflow to Ukraine in the week of April 1-7 rose to a record 97,000 people from 18,000 a week earlier, which can be explained by Easter holidays and school vacations in Europe.
According to the State Border Service in Facebook, the flow to leave Ukraine in that week decreased from 247 thousand to 241 thousand people, while the flow to enter jumped from 265 thousand to 338 thousand people.
According to the Ministry, the number of cars crossed the western Ukrainian border, in the 14th week of the year also increased, but not so significantly – from 127 thousand to 132 thousand, and the number of vehicles with humanitarian cargoes declined – from 688 to 522.
The largest net inflow to Ukraine – from 15 to 27 thousand people per day – was fixed on April 1-3, when 47-58 thousand people daily entered the country, which resulted in queues at the border, especially from Poland.
Polish Border Guard Service also recorded a significant net inflow to Ukraine for the last seven days – 87.7 thousand people compared to 18.6 thousand a week earlier.
According to the Polish Ministry, the weekly flow from Ukraine to Poland reduced from 165.8 thousand people to 155.3 thousand, whereas the return flow from Poland to Ukraine increased from 184.4 thousand people to 243.0 thousand.
In total, since the beginning of the war, by April 7, 2023, 10.95 million people had arrived in Poland from Ukraine, while in the opposite direction 9.17 million people were transported.
As it was reported, since May 10, 2022, the outflow of refugees from Ukraine was replaced by an inflow, which lasted until September 23 and amounted to 409 thousand people.
However, during the last week of September, the net outflow was 28 thousand people at once, and one of the possible reasons was a reaction to mobilization in Russia and “pseudo-referendums” in the occupied territories, and then the probable reason for the continued net outflow was the massive shelling of the energy infrastructure. It temporarily stopped in the second half of December and early January for the period of the holidays, but from the second week of January it resumed again and cumulatively since late September by the anniversary of the full-scale war reached 223 thousand people.
However, since that moment 130 thousand more people entered Ukraine than left.
As Deputy Economy Minister Sergei Sobolev noted in early March, the return of every 100,000 Ukrainians home gives a 0.5% increase in GDP.
According to UNHCR data as of April 4, a total of 20.19 million people left Ukraine since the war began (not including the flow of people into the country), of which 10.61 million left for Poland, 2.85 million for Russia (data as of October 3), 2.45 million for Hungary, 2.19 million for Romania, 1.28 million for Slovakia, 0.80 million for Moldova and 0.02 million for Belarus.
At the same time, according to the UN data, 11.63 million people arrived in Ukraine from February 28, 2022 to April 4, 2023 (excluding the data of Hungary, Russia and Belarus).
The number of Ukrainians registered in Europe with temporary protection status or similar reached 5.027 million on April 4, increasing by 19 thousand during the week.
