people, representing only 1.4% loss of the 1989 population. However, this was due to the influx of approximately 200,000 Crimean Tatars – a number equivalent to approximately 10% of Crimea's 1989 population – who arrived in Crimea after 1989 and whose population in that region increased by a factor of 6.4 from 38,000 to 243,400 between 1989 and 2001. Collectively, the net population loss in the regions of Ukraine outside the westernmost regions was 2,759,200 people or 6.6% of the 1989 population. The total population of these regions in 2001 was 39,186,100. Thus, from 1989–2001 the pattern of population change was one of slight growth in Kyiv, slight declines in western Ukraine, large declines in eastern, central and southern Ukraine and a relatively small decline in Crimea due to a large influx of Crimean Tatars. Regional differences in birth and fertility rates Ukraine's total fertility rate is one of the lowest in Europe. However, significant regional differences in birth rates may account for some of the demographic differences. In the third quarter of 2007, for instance, the highest birth rate among Ukrainian regions occurred in Volyn Oblast, with a birth rate of 13.4/1,000 people, compared to the Ukrainian country-wide average of 9.6/1,000 people. Volyn's birthrate is higher than the average birth rate of any European country with the exceptions of Iceland and Albania. In 2007, for the first time since 1990, five Ukrainian regions (Zakarpattia Oblast, Rivne Oblast, Volyn Oblast, Lviv Oblast, and Kyiv Oblast) experienced more births than deaths. This demonstrates a positive trend of increasing birthrates in the last couple of years throughout Ukraine. The ratio of births to deaths in those regions in 2007 was 119%, 117%, 110%, 100.7%, and 108%, respectively. With the exception of Kyiv region, all of the regions with more births than deaths were in the less industrially developed regions of western Ukraine. According to a spokesperson for Ukraine's Ministry of Justice, the overall ratio of births to deaths in Ukraine had improved from 1 to 1.7 in 2004–2005 to 1 to 1.4 in 2008. However, the worst birth to death ratios in the country were in the eastern and central oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Cherkasy and Poltava. In these regions, for every birth there were 2.1 deaths. Notably, western Ukraine never experienced the Holodomor, as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania ruled it at the time, helping to explain the better demographics there, as