When Vladimir Putin first came to power in Russia a quarter of a century ago, the country was in the grip of a severe demographic crisis. Twenty-five years into his rule, it is once again on the brink of major demographic challenges.
At first glance, the current situation resembles what the country went through in the late 1990s: a declining birth rate, natural population decline, and rising male mortality. But certain aspects of the current crisis make it far more dangerous than the previous one.
First, the country is now facing a deeper decline in the birth rate, a worsening age structure of the population, and various consequences of the war. Second, the main demographic shock absorber is disappearing: Russia’s appeal to immigrants, who for three decades offset the natural population decline.
Demographic processes in Russia develop in cycles lasting twenty-five to thirty years. These cycles originate in the catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century—above all, World War II.
According to the state statistics service Rosstat, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic lost 6.9 million children aged four and under during World War II due to declining birth rates and rising mortality rates alone. Another 12.9 million people over the age of four were killed, including soldiers. This triggered clear demographic waves in Russia’s age structure: a postwar rise in the birth rate was followed by a decline in 1960–1968, a rise in 1969–1988, a sharp decline from 1987 to 1999, and a new rise through 2016.
Now Russia is entering another phase of decline. In 2024, 1.22 million people were born: only slightly more than the all-time recorded low of 1.21 million in 1999. That year won’t hold the record for much longer: the number of births will decline by 3–5 percent each year, and slow growth can only be expected to resume after 2029–2030.
To stabilize even at this critically low level, the total fertility rate (the average number of births per woman) must increase from its current level of 1.4 to 1.7–1.8, and remain there until the early to mid-2030s. Amid overall instability, that is virtually impossible without unprecedented spending on family policy.
The key difference between the current demographic crisis and the previous one is that the latter was significantly mitigated by an element that is now absent: immigration. The collapse of the Soviet Union set in motion powerful centripetal flows, as Russian-speaking residents of the former Soviet republics began returning to Russia. In 1994 alone, almost a million people immigrated to Russia.
During the post-Soviet period (1992–2023), 49.1 million people were born in Russia, and 65.9 million died, resulting in a natural population decline of 16.8 million. But 73.6 percent of that natural decline was offset by the arrival of 12.3 million immigrants.
Today, that compensation mechanism is not working. People in Central Asia—traditionally the biggest source of labor migrants to Russia—now have alternative employment opportunities in other countries and at home, while the Russian economy, lacking any prospects for rapid growth, is increasingly unattractive. According to Interior Ministry statistics, there are currently 3–3.5 million legal labor migrants in Russia, compared with about 4.5 million before the COVID-19 pandemic, and 5–7 million in 2012–2013.
A growing number of alternative destinations are opening up for migrants from Central Asia, including the European Union, the Persian Gulf countries, Turkey, and South Korea. At the same time, rising xenophobia in Russian society and the persecution of Central Asians following the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack are making Russia increasingly unattractive as a labor market.
Indeed, Russia has transformed from a center of attraction to a source of emigration. The invasion of Ukraine and subsequent mobilization triggered the largest population outflow in the last twenty years, with about 650,000 people moving abroad. Worse still, this was largely a brain drain, as those who left were predominantly young, highly qualified professionals.
Since then, the initial surge in emigration has subsided, but the population outflow looks set to continue on a smaller scale. Moreover, the potential remains for major new waves of emigration in the event of further mobilization, increased repression, or a drastic economic deterioration.
All of this makes the current demographic crisis more dangerous than the previous one. The breakdown of the compensation mechanism for natural population decline creates a multitude of risks, first and foremost to the labor market. Staff shortages in key sectors (construction, transportation, trade, and agriculture) are already slowing economic growth. At the end of 2024, Russian companies were short about 2.2 million workers, and almost 70 percent of companies were experiencing labor shortages. This trend will only grow stronger.
The situation is exacerbated by long-standing excess mortality rates, particularly among men, which doubles the demographic pressure on the country’s future. People aged sixty-five and over now account for more than 18 percent of the population (a historical record), and by the middle of this century, that figure will rise to 24 percent. An aging population without an influx of young workers is becoming an overwhelming burden on Russia’s pension and healthcare systems. The collapse of the social security system is a very real prospect.
Inevitably, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has also had an impact. According to estimates by Mediazona, BBC Russian Service, and Meduza, as of the end of August 2025, at least 219,000 Russians had been killed in the war: primarily men of working and reproductive age. The indirect losses are on an even larger scale: for every soldier killed, several are seriously wounded, many of whom are left disabled and unable to work. They are also likely to live shorter lives than they would have under normal circumstances.
The mass return of psychologically traumatized soldiers from the front for whom human life may now seem cheap is a direct path to an increase in alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence, and crime.
The situation will likely be further exacerbated by budget cuts and sanctions. Reduced public investment in healthcare, shortages of medicines and equipment, and delays in introducing innovations are leading to a decline in healthcare and an increase in preventable deaths. The cumulative effect of these factors will likely be millions of excess deaths over the next decade.
Comparing the current situation with that at the turn of the century reveals one more fundamental difference. In the 2000s, the authorities recognized the extent of the crisis and attempted to implement a rational demographic policy: they introduced payments for families for having more children, increased child benefits, and boosted investment in the healthcare system, among other measures.
Even in those better times, however, less than 1 percent of GDP was spent on supporting families. The average in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries is over 2 percent, and in Northern Europe and other countries such as France and Poland, it is more than 3 percent. Still, as both total fertility rates and birth rates in Russia rose, the authorities began to report that the demographic problem had been resolved.
The reality turned out to be very different. After the partial successes of the 2010s, with the onset of the full-scale war against Ukraine, rational policy gave way to demographic hysteria. As funding was redirected to the war effort, bans were announced against the “LGBT movement” and childfree ideology, the idea of reinstating the Soviet childlessness tax started being discussed, access to abortions became restricted, and “demographic special forces” were introduced.
Setting aside the question of how ethical such measures are, from a demographic perspective they are completely pointless. The abortion rate in Russia decreased sixfold in the post-Soviet years, even without any government bans. Further restrictions will not solve the problem of low birth rates, but could exacerbate social tensions, further undermining trust in the government.
Finally, the most alarming sign is the authorities’ attempts to conceal or distort demographic data. The poor quality of the latest census, distorted migration statistics, and the classification of much demographic data are proof that the authorities are only capable of changing the situation on paper.
But statistical manipulation doesn’t solve the fundamental problems. According to this author’s calculations based on the latest UN forecast, if migration were to drop to zero, by 2100 Russia’s population could be just 90.8 million instead of 112.2 million in the medium-case scenario, and 57.4 million instead of 74.6 million in the worst-case scenario.
Russia is completing the full demographic cycle of the Putin era in conditions that are fundamentally more dangerous than a quarter of a century ago. The next generation of Russian leaders will likely inherit a massive demographic crisis, with potential immigrants scared off and the coffers empty. All of that will threaten the country with irreversible demographic contraction, the consequences of which will be felt for many generations to come.
