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Donetsk, 
Ukraine
705,832 people lived in Donetsk in 2025. It is the 758th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 5th largest in Ukraine.
Like every city on this site, Donetsk is counted as a built-up area seen from above rather than as a city government's territory. Why that changes the number.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Donetsk grew
Count 10 people in Donetsk in 1975 and the same count gives 7.9 in 2025 — the city lost people.
On the UN's projection it will have 576,126 people in 2050. It passed a million people between 1980 and 1985.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Donetsk through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Donetsk in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Ukraine · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 79 cities in Ukraine in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Kiev. The ringed dot in colour is Donetsk; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Donetsk covered 186 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 42 km² of it. That is 59 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 8 by 8 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown by 42%, and its people have fallen by 21%.
How to read this: pale is the whole of the city's land; the stronger square inside it is what is actually built on. The three are drawn to the same scale, so a larger square really is more land, and hatching means the year is the UN's projection rather than a count.
Of every 100 people in Ukraine
Its share of Ukraine
Of every 100 people in Ukraine in 2025, 2 lived in Donetsk, which is 705,832 people.
How to read this: shrink Ukraine to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Donetsk; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 754 Bi'r Rubak Yemen712,438
- 755 Xiaogan China711,726
- 756 Mirzapur India710,567
- 757 Panipat India710,363
- 758 Donetsk705,832
- 759 Jiaozuo China704,917
- 760 Rasoi India703,790
- 761 Yiyang China703,724
- 762 Tai'an China703,020
In Ukraine, 2025
- 192 Kiev2,614,581
- 394 Kharkiv1,308,892
- 575 Odesa899,157
- 670 Dnipro792,115
- 758 Donetsk705,832
- 863 Lviv627,280
- 966 Zaporizhzhia566,844
- 1161 Kryvyi Rih477,940
- 1342 Mykolaiv419,484
How to read this: names are in order of size, the leading number being each city's rank among all 12,138 in 2025; the bars share a scale within a list. A jump in the ranks means a city under 300,000 people, which is not given a page here.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Donetsk are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Donetsk publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries