Russian Population Bust

For John, BLUF:  Russia is not the only nation losing population.  China, South Korea Japan♠ have all lost total population.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Russia loses a million people in historic population fall

From France 24, 28 January 2022, 22:02.

Here is the lede plus four:

Russia's population declined by more than one million people in 2021, the statistics agency Rosstat reported Friday, a historic drop not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ongoing demographic woes have been exacerbated by the pandemic with Rosstat figures showing more than 660,000 had died with coronavirus since health officials recorded the first case in the country.

The new figures continue a downward trend from the previous year when Russia's population fell by more than half a million.

The Covid-related fatalities figures published monthly by Rosstat are far higher than death figures released by a separate government website, which is dedicated to tracking the pandemic in the country.

Those government website figures only take into account fatalities where the virus was established as the primary cause of death after an autopsy and shows just 329,443 total fatalities.

This does not mean that Russia is about to collapse.  Far from it.  Russia is still a nuclear armed Regional Power.  Long Term, there are problems, but President V Putin will be in a nursing home before they impact Russia's foreign policy.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Japan’s persistent inability to reverse falling birth number includes a 2020 birth rate of 1.34 children per woman (2.1 needed to sustain a population), with just 840,000 babies born in Japan that year.  Thus, population peaked in 2008 at almost 128m, but last year dropped to 126m.