RUSSIA IS DYING & THERE’S NO GOING BACK

I’m going to approach this in two parts because they’re of equal importance and each is in most ways a consequence of the other. First we’ll look at population decline – why it’s happening and what the causes are. Then we’ll look at the difference between being what Russians think of as Russian, and what the rest of the Russian Federation has to deal with because of it. It’s a pretty dark tale, it’s almost inevitably, a terminal prognosis.

This subject has fascinated me for a long time, because in many ways it’s the core of problems in the United States, in the UK, France and Germany, as well as others. For them, if they change their attitudes and their policies their nations will survive, but for Russia, its combined approach to both subjects, the policies it has implemented, have cemented it to a doom cycle of its own making.

POPULATION DECLINE

The Population of the Russian Federation including all of its citizens, who by law are considered equal, reached its peak in 1994. By the time the rest of its empire had escaped into independence, it stood at 148.3 million.

•   1994: Around 148.3 million
•   1995: 148.3 million
•   2000: 146.7 million
•   2005: 144.6 million
•   2010: 143.9 million
•   2015: 145.3 millio
•   2020: 146.4 million
•   2022: 145.6 millio
•   2023: 145.4 million
•   2024: Between 144.8 million and 144.0 million (varies by source; likely around 144.8 million)
•   2025: Estimates vary from about 143.5 million, 143.9 million, to 144.0 million

As you can see from the above, given current estimates the population has declined by around 5,000,000 in around 30 years. It would be substantially worse if the 2,000,000 people annexed in Crimea in 2014 were excluded.

Part of that is the war, but most of it comes from premature deaths, especially amongst men who have an average life span of just 58 years, as opposed to women at 76. The principle cause is alcoholism, followed by cancer related to excessive tobacco consumption.

Generally the number of births in Russia is considerably less than the number of deaths. In the first six months of this year, 2025, there were 600,000 fewer births than deaths across the federation, but a key part is that this is particularly high ratio in the ethnic Russian population. The economy, the war, property costs, the simple cost of raising a child, is more than most can afford, so they simply don’t have babies, no matter how hard the state tries to persuade them to.

The United Nations predictions for Russia’s population at current rates, in 2100, is set to be in a worse case range of 83.7 million to a best case range (based on a major reversal of health and economic factors) of just 112 million.

There are some interesting health issues that permeate Russia. It’s largely been stamped out now but at one point in the late 1990’s & early 2000’s as many as 1 in 15 people were heroin addicts.

Alcoholism was actually attacked quite vigorously in the 2008-12 period, ironically by President Medvedev. Russia’s vodka addiction began centuries ago, a tool used by the Imperial Government to deliberately addict its vast and rather uneducated population to a state supplied drug, that kept them both obedient and quiescent. However the Czar, Nicholas-II banned it on September 28 1914 to prevent it being a problem in Russian armies and industries where consumption was rampant. The reality was it caused budgetary mayhem as it represented 33% of the government’s revenue. Following the fall of the Empire in 1917, the Bolsheviks also banned its use, seeing it for what it was, as a means of Czarist control over its subjects. That remained the case until Stalin, in 1925, realized there was a fortune to be made from a state controlled liquor market and lifted the ban. Coupled to a state monopoly on cigarettes and tobacco, it raised huge revenues.

Russia’s dependence on Vodka and these days liquor more generally, is a public health crisis. Medvedev tried to remedy it but as soon as Putin came back to power he was all to well aware of its ability to keep the population quiet and repealed the laws. 90% of Russian men admit they get ‘extremely drunk’ at least once a week or more.

Russia also suffers from a very high rate of HIV infections running at 1.5 to 1.6 million civilians living with the infection – the highest level in Europe. Medicines are almost impossible to acquire. The Governments attitude towards it is that its an LGBTQ issue and therefore illegal and immoral, (when in fact its mostly drug taking related, especially in the military where it runs at 20% infection rate). With HIV charities and health advice being considered ‘alien government agencies’, they’ve been shut out of the country and there’s almost no help or advice and zero education on prevention. Civilian HIV rates are said to be increasing at around 94,000 per year.

These figures extend across the entire federation, but it’s perfectly clear that the majority of the serious diseases and problems are in Moscow and St Petersburg, and the vast majority of those areas are largely ethnic Russian. It’s ethnic Russia that has the lowest birth rates, the highest disease rates and subsequent death rates. And this is a problem entirely of Russia’s own making.

RUSSIA, A LAND EMPIRE WITH A DYING, ESSENTIALLY RACIST CORE

Russia’s empire was created essentially by imperialist expansionist ethnic Russians over the course of centuries. Basically a white race, with pretensions of grandeur, Russians used brute force and ignorance to walk over the vast areas of Asia once ruled by the Mongols like Ghengis Khan, whose immense empire stretched at one time to the Carpathian Mountains of Europe to the Pacific coast, covering the whole of Central Asia. Its collapse and Russia’s rise are no coincidence.

I have said before that Russia is the last of the old Imperial powers. The western empires were largely maritime and their colonies have for the most part long gone, their empires but a memory. Russia is still here. It has yet to face the decolonization process in full, although it lost a good deal in 1990-94. It resents it to this day.

The war against Ukraine was, ostensibly about defending the Russian language and Russian ethnic populations. There were many in Ukraine who had some sympathy with that view. Odessa was after all, considered a Russian colonial gem, its ethnic Russians a majority of the population. More than a few in the military and general population, especially in Kharkiv and Donetsk held similar views. The war and their reaction against Russia has seen a stunning turnaround in their allegiances. Now they see themselves as part of Ukraine. This war has created a Ukrainian identity as little else could have.

Ethnic Russians, who for the most part are western Russia, with occasional spots of population along the old imperial routes to the far east, are a majority, but that’s changing at high speed because of the population decline, which is mostly amongst the ethnic Russians. Currently it sits a 72%. According to the 2021 Census that fell from 111 million in 2010 to 105.5 million in 2020/21.

However in Chechnya, Dagestan and the Muslim regions of Central Asia, populations are rising and becoming monoethnic. Russians do not like living in in such regions and tend to leave if they feel uncomfortable. Similarly the reaction of Muscovites to regional populations in the city is frankly racist and exclusionary. Police treat them as second rate citizens even though legally they’re their equals.

There’s a direct comparison of course to the way white Americans who vote for Trump see themselves as under threat from what they see as increasing brown populations who maintain high birth rates. It’s exactly the same mentality and there’s no getting away from it. Even Alexei Navalny referred to immigrants and Russian Asiatic populations as ‘cockroaches’. He really wasn’t the hero people imagine, just a man with a massive grudge against Putin and his regime, and a severe stubborn streak.

The irony of course is it’s been the increasing wealth of white populations, that’s increased housing costs and everything about living in a city. Add to that professional jobs and careers, which disincentivise raising a family, the outrageous level of inflation and interest rates, and is it any wonder young married couples just don’t want children? Add the war to that and the feeling of quiet doom it brings and it’s not conducive.

Yet on the other side of this the Putin regime is busy protecting its Ethnic Russian populations from the war as much as it can. Most of the recruitment has come from poor regions, Asiatic ethnicities are predominately in the army front lines, most officers come from Ethnic Russian backgrounds. It’s a deliberate form of old style Imperial control used by the western empires who used heir colonial armies to fight in both world wars, commanded by European officers.

The decline in Russia’s population is now set in stone. The UN sees no way out of it. The decline in Russian ethnic dominance is also steep and seems to be accelerating.

Russians struggle with these facts. Their entire identity is based on Russian superiority, being the core of their nation. Partly the war against Ukraine was to drag them back into the fold, add 44 million new tax payers and re-boot the population shrink. Putin’s excuse that ‘there are no Ukrainians’ is a way of re-balancing the ethnic Russian population.

Sooner or later this will have its impact. Give them the opportunity and the Chechnya’s and Dagestan’s, Bashkortostan and others will see a moment and they’ll be out of this fake federation as fast as they can. Russians will be trapped in their west of the Urals fiefdom and little more angry and lot more humble until they get used to it. That day is coming. Putin, his dictatorship, his corruption and the kleptocratic oligarchy he created will simply end. Russia will now slowly decline as its ethnic population becomes increasingly small and irrelevant. It’s all Putin’s doing over 25 years, this is his real legacy. And the irony? The world will be a better place for it.

The Analyst

militaryanalyst.bsky.social