[4][5] Novoselytsia raion, within its boundaries at that time, had 87,241 inhabitants in 2001, including 34.08% Ukrainian-speakers, 64% Romanian-speakers, and 1.78% Russian-speakers.

[9] By contrast, the number of self-identified ethnic Romanians has increased (from 585 to 5,904),and so has their proportion of the population of the former raion (from 0.67% to 6.77%), and the process has continued after the 2001 census.

From 1991 to 2020, the village of Mahala was a part of the Noua Suliță/Novoselytsia Raion of the Chernivtsi region of independent Ukraine.

According to the 1989 census, the number of inhabitants of Mahala who declared themselves Romanians plus Moldovans was 2,231 (16 + 2,215), representing 90.40% of the population.

[18][19] The self-declared Romanian speakers were thus 42.85% of the Romanian-speaking population of this Bukovinian area, while 57.15% called their language "Moldovan".

In most of the formerly Bukovinian villages of the raion, while there was typically a significant switch from a Moldovan linguistic and ethnic to a Romanian linguistic and ethnic identity from 1989 to 2001, there were still more people who claimed in 2001 that their native language was Moldovan than the number of those who called it Romanian.

[22][23][24] The singer Sofia Rotaru was born in Marshyntsi, one of the Romanian speaking villages of the Raion.

[25] Novoselytsia Raion had 1 city and 30 communes: Of these, Boiany, Chornivka, Mahala, Sloboda, Pripruttia, Toporivtsi and Zelenyi Hai are in the historical region of Bukovina, while the remainder are in Bessarabia.