The Russian population has been shrinking and aging for years. The situation is getting worse as a result of the Ukraine war: For Putin, demographic change may be one of the reasons why he invaded the neighboring country in the first place.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he wanted to denazify the country. But he could have had a completely different reason. Namely, to "increase" the population of Russia.
The country is on a demographic decline. The Russian population has been shrinking for years. A trend that is being reinforced by the Ukraine war: the country lost 480,000 people in the first half of the year alone. According to the Russian statistics agency Rosstat, the population has fallen to 146.1 million. The forecasts don't look good either. The Russian population will shrink to 130 to 140 million inhabitants in the next 28 years - by 2050.
Yale University historian Timothy Snyder writes in the journal Foreign Affairs that Putin is obsessed with demographics. He's afraid his race might be outnumbered. French demographer Laurent Chalard says Putin believes that the power of a country depends on the size of its population: the larger the population, the more powerful the state. And the Science and Politics Foundation also analyzes that Russia's domestic policy goal is to use immigration to counteract the natural decline in the country's population.
The Russian population is already old and very female. There are significantly more women than men, only around 46 percent of the people in Russia are male. The average age is 38.8 years. For comparison: The average age worldwide is 30 years, in the EU countries it is even 44.
The fact that there are so few young people in Russia has something to do with the Second World War, explains political scientist Alexander Libman, professor at the East European Institute at Freie Universität Berlin, in the ntv podcast "Learned again". "In the 1940s, the casualties among civilians, but also among soldiers, were enormous. Both directly from the war and from hunger, poor nutrition and disease. One speaks of the echo of the war."
The 1990s were also decisive for Russia. The Soviet Union collapsed and the economy collapsed. This time was "an extreme shock for the Russian population," says Alexander Libman. People would have lost everything. Mortality rates and alcohol consumption have increased. The result was a "massive drop in birth rates". "The generation now relevant to the war was very small because of the combination of these two demographic events."
In addition, there is the demographic development, which can also be observed in other industrialized nations since the Second World War - including Germany. Society is aging. People live longer, women make careers and have later and fewer children.
Normally that's not a problem, explains the political scientist. "Now Russia is waging a conventional ground war. Like in the 19th and 20th centuries. You need a lot of young men for such wars. And in a society like that of Russia - just like that of Germany, France, America or Australia - structurally there aren't enough young people Men, because generally few children are born."
Russia is also one of the most important immigration countries in the world. Over eleven million migrants lived in the country in 2020. Most of them come from former Soviet republics such as Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Ukraine. Russia relies on immigration for economic reasons. But immigration numbers are falling - also due to the Ukraine war.
Journalists from the Russian newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" have calculated that over the long term, more than ten percent of young men could be lost to Russia because of the war. The partial mobilization announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin in September has had a major impact on this, says Alexander Libman. At least 200,000 men have already been drafted.
"The majority of these people will not survive the war there or will come home very badly injured because we have a war with massive use of artillery." The probability of being wounded or killed at the front is 60 to 70 percent, according to economist Oleg Itskhoki.
Those who don't want to fight flee abroad. Young men in particular try to get across the borders. At least 700,000 Russians appear to have fled even before the partial mobilization. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands who have emigrated from Russia since the start of the Ukraine war. In the first half of the year there were 419,000, says the Russian statistics authority. There are many reasons for fleeing: Political opponents go into exile. Young specialists look for jobs in other countries. Tens of thousands of wealthy Russians are leaving the country.
Alexander Libman estimates that around a million people have fled the country so far. Some would come back, but the missing men would cause a kink again in a few years. "The crisis means that even fewer people are being born. The fact that soldiers are on the front lines will lead to a lost cohort again in 10 to 20 years."
The Eastern Europe expert estimates that this is less dramatic than it sounds. Because Russia is a resource-rich country. This one could actually survive quite well with a small population. However, he sees a completely different problem: "We will see a massive decline in the quality of human capital. And that's because those who have been trained in particular will leave the country. That will also have a strong impact on schools and the university system."
The massive brain drain could turn into a fiasco for the Russian economy. A "brain drain" that could weaken Russia in the long term. After the partial mobilization at the end of September, the Russian economy has already clearly lost momentum. And Russia's central bank expects it to shrink even further this year.
In addition, productivity and purchasing power will fall. A lot of things are no longer consumed, explains Alexander Libman. The partial mobilization has a "clearly negative" effect on Russia's economy: "The bottom line is that mobilization will cost Russia significantly more than all the sanctions that the West can introduce."
A number of large Russian companies are already campaigning to ensure that their employees do not have to go to the front as soldiers, reports political scientist Sebastian Hoppe from Freie Universität Berlin: "At the moment we are seeing Russian companies lobbying, trying to justify to the state why their employees should not be drafted. For example, because they are important in the energy sector or in the defense industry."
If there are fewer and fewer young men, Russian women could fill the gap. And help out in the professions that are still forbidden to them today. In order to boost the birth rate in Russia, a law was introduced in 1974 banning women from doing heavy manual labor. You should have children. To date, 100 professions are banned for Russian women. You may - at least officially - not be a firefighter, build subways or weld. This could change now.
Just like in the Russian military: due to a lack of male recruits, Russia opened its army to women in the 1990s. A total of 44,000 women now work in the military - as professional soldiers. In the meantime, they are apparently also being trained there as pilots - a profession that women were also forbidden until recently.
