Dramatic population drop in Russia
As Russia’s war against Ukraine intensifies around Bakhmut, a new report estimates that the invading army has had between 200,000 to 250,000 casualties – dead and wounded – in the past year.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) calculates that the average rate of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine every month is “at least 25 times the number killed per month in Chechnya and 35 times the number killed in Afghanistan”.
Coming on the heels of one of the worst COVID-19 mortality rates in the world and a mass exodus of young men and their families fleeing from conscription, Russia may have lost two million people in the past three years, according to The Economist.
The life expectancy of Russian males aged 15 is currently at the same level as those in Haiti.
The country’s birth rates have been in decline since 1994 when Russia was estimated to have 149 million citizens. By the start of 2022, its population was estimated to be 145,6 million, with 3,358 births a day being more than cancelled out by a daily death rate of 3,663, according to Statistica.
Between 1 January 2022 and 1 January this year, the Russian population was estimated to have decreased by approximately 560,000.
Aside from deaths, estimates of people immigrating range from 500,000 to a million people in the past year alone.
