Putin’s war sent Russia into a deadly demographic spiral

We were already talking about it a year ago, but this phenomenon is accelerating: the logical obsession of Vladimir Putin, who can only see his nation at large, the Russian population is shockingly falling.

when The country’s budget deficit is sinking into the deep redAnd that is the oligarchy Oleg Deripaska did not hesitate to predict doom for 2024 If the country doesn’t find foreign investors, it’s the long-term prospects that worry the Kremlin the most.

In an article on the question, The Economist did not hesitate to speak “The Dream”And the figures cited by the newspaper are enough to give Vladimir Putin a cold sweat, he explained in 2021. “The population problem is paramount.”.

Life expectancy for 15-year-old males dropped five years to reach the same level as in Haiti. The number of Russians born in April 2022 is not higher than during World War II and the Nazi invasion. According to demographer Alexey Raksha, the number of births in peacetime after 18 was not low.^e century

Hundreds of thousands of young men, usually highly educated, fled the country before the outbreak of war to avoid conscription. The conflict in Ukraine, according to some analysis, 200,000 victims on the Russian side – ie [Morethanallthewarsthecountryhasexperiencedsince1945[1945முதல்நாடுஅனுபவித்தஅனைத்துபோர்களையும்விடஅதிகம்.

The Fall of the Russian House

Russian demographic evil precedes a war of aggression in Ukraine. However, this adds black to black, and sinks the country into what The Economist calls it “A hellish population spiral”. It all started three decades ago: the population peaked in 1994 with 149 million people.

Since then, it has been a hellish decline that many countries of the post-Soviet world have been experiencing. Despite some progress in the 2000s, due to high immigration and an active pronatalist policy, Russia is losing totals every year.

If this trend continues, the country will have only 120 million people in 50 years: from being the sixth most populous country in the world in 1995, it will fall to a very modest fifteenth place.

The Covid-19 pandemic – and a Russian vaccine, as in neighboring China, Less effective than claimed by authorities– has also been. The official death toll is 388,091, but The Economist calculates an increase of 1.2 to 1.6 million deaths from 2020 to 2023.

This is enormous, and explains why, between 2020 and 2021, the Russian population decreased by 1.3 million people, with the number of deaths exceeding the number of births by 1.7 million. According to The Economist, Russia has lost between 1.9 and 2.8 million people between 2020 and 2023, adding war losses, Covid deaths and basic population trends.

As the British magazine reminds us, no trend is irreversible and Russia has already, in the 2010s, managed to raise the bar somewhat after the 2000s, when it lost a million people a year.

However, in the immediate and future, it is a disaster: a massive flight of young people threatens to further complicate the task of Vladimir Putin. It will drastically increase the strength of the country’s forcesAnd who is at risk A new imperative is needed To wage its disastrous war in Ukraine.

As in Dagestan, the pressure will be strong on the dead and already overrepresented in the ranks of the Russian army. Admission riots eventually broke outor sent before and en masse among the Buryats Considered dispensable “cannon fodder” by the Russian authorities.

Disastrous economy and long term: Russia has lost tens of thousands of highly skilled young people, especially in information technology and everything related to it, people who can imagine creating the future.

“The hellish demographic spiral has not dampened Mr. Putin’s appetite for success. But it is making Russia a smaller, less educated and poorer country, from which young people are leaving and men are dying in their 60s. The Economist ends the article crudely.