Russia’s Demographic Vanishing Act: A Warning From History

By Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of International Politics and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School

Earlier this summer, Russia’s statistical agency Rosstat quietly stopped publishing monthly demographic data—a move that should alarm any Russia analyst who understands the relationship between population dynamics and political stability.¹ According to demographer Alexei Raksha, “We consider the full suppression of regional demographic statistics a clear sign of failed demographic policy at the regional level.” This isn’t merely bureaucratic housekeeping; it’s a desperate attempt to hide a serious demographic crisis that threatens the foundations of the Russian state. Russian President Vladimir Putin, well aware of the dynamics even earlier, canceled part of the All-Russian Population Census until 2029 last October.

As someone who has spent decades studying how population changes reshape domestic and international security, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, I recognize this pattern. When authoritarian regimes begin hiding demographic data, it signals not just statistical embarrassment but critical concern. Russia’s decision to shroud its population figures in secrecy represents only the latest chapter in a long history of Soviet and Russian demographic denial—and it portends dangerous consequences for regional stability.

Crucially, Russia’s decision to withhold detailed demographic data impedes U.S. efforts to assess the true scale of its population decline, wartime casualties and recruitment capacity—undermining intelligence estimates of Moscow’s long-term military and economic resilience. This reflects a longstanding tradition, continued under Putin, of concealing demographic and military realities from both domestic and foreign observers.

At the same time, concealed birth, death and migration trends mask early warning signs of humanitarian and migratory pressures that could spill into neighbouring states, straining NATO’s eastern flank. This deliberate obfuscation erodes bilateral trust, complicates diplomatic engagement across security and crisis‑management arenas and heightens the risk that demographic distress will be used to justify internal repression or external adventurism—leaving Washington with greater uncertainty in calibrating its support for Ukraine, its defense posture in Europe and broader U.S.–Russian relations.

A Familiar Pattern of Demographic Denial

Russia’s census information blackout echoes earlier moments of demographic concealment. Joseph Stalin’s regime suppressed then manipulated the 1937 and 1939 censuses to hide the catastrophic human toll of collectivization and the Great Purge in the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, rising mortality rates among the Slavic population and relatively high fertility rates in Muslim-majority regions prompted Soviet authorities to halt publication of death and other statistics from the census for nearly a decade. Only during last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost did the true scale of the Soviet demographic crisis emerge, and at stake was the very foundation of the USSR’s power and stability: a shrinking, aging workforce threatened industrial output and long‑term modernization; rising Slav male mortality (due to alcoholism and related diseases and accidents, which is why Gorbachev launched an anti-alcohol campaign) and persistently low birth rates among Slavs, who were seen as the backbone to the USSR, jeopardized the economy’s labor force and the pool of conscripts needed to sustain Cold War military strength; and nationalist unrest among growing populations in more peripheral republics and rural districts fueled centrifugal pressures. Ultimately, this demographic erosion undercut the Kremlin’s global standing and bargaining leverage vis‑à‑vis the United States and NATO.

Today’s Russia has reverted to a familiar playbook. The timing is significant: its current data blackout coincides with mounting evidence of a demographic collapse, one that has been sharply accelerated by the war in Ukraine and is now fueling instability both domestically and internationally. In response, Russia may attempt to substitute capital for labor—a marked departure from its historical and cultural norms. Yet as Jennifer Sciubba argued in Bloomberg last month—the core challenge is not merely demographic decline itself, but how Russia constructs its national identity around population and power. Putin remains fixated on a mythologized past in which Russia’s strength is derived from an abundant supply of young soldiers. He continues to equate demographic mass with geopolitical power—in part because power is all that matters to him. This fixation blinds him to a broader truth: many of Russia’s rivals face similar demographic headwinds. The difference is that, in Russia’s case, Putin’s own policies are hastening the decline.

The Ukraine War’s Demographic Toll

The numbers that Russia is now hiding tell a devastating story. In 2024, deaths outnumbered births by roughly 600,000—the steepest natural decline since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Rosstat (as reported by Bloomberg). Birth rates have plummeted to what may be a 200-year low. Meanwhile, military casualties and emigration have created a demographic hemorrhage that Moscow can no longer spin or minimize: estimates of casualties are upwards of 790,000, according to Russia Matters.

The war has also triggered a massive outflow of human capital from Russia, some 800,000, most of whom are disproportionately young, educated, and urban—having fled to avoid conscription or to express dissent. Those Russian males who remain in Russia face mobilization. Moreover, immigration is not likely to offer relief from these population losses. This is despite Putin’s January 2024 enticement, which loosened earlier decrees, of offering Russian citizenship to those who sign military contracts, and most recently his July 2025 decree opening up military service to stateless persons. These are not positive inducements, especially when reports indicate “volunteer” deaths now account for more than those of any other type of Russian soldier. This reflects a growing desperation for new recruits. Once data emerge about who is actually dying in the war, recruitment numbers are likely to decline even further.

The Ethnic Dimension of Demographic Decline

Perhaps most troubling is the uneven geographic and ethnic impact of this demographic crisis. Moscow and St. Petersburg residents, with their higher incomes and international connections, have been better able to flee or avoid military service. The burden has fallen disproportionately on poorer, predominantly minority parts of Russia—Siberia, the North Caucasus and other areas with large non-Slavic populations.

This wartime mobilization has disproportionately drawn on Russia’s most fertile regions—areas whose birth rates once promised demographic stability but now supply the Kremlin’s dwindling manpower. Of the Russian Federation’s 85 federal subjects (including Sevastopol and Crimea, whose annexation Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies do not recognize)—which comprise oblasts, republics, krais, autonomous okrugs, one autonomous oblast and the federal cities of Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Sevastopol—only two, Chechnya and Tuva, have Total Fertility Rates (TFR) above the replacement-level threshold of 2.1 children per woman. By contrast, Russia’s national TFR stood at just 1.41 in 2024.

Consider the North Caucasus region, of which Chechnya is a part. Despite protests against mobilization that caught local officials off guard in Dagestan, for example, the region exceeded its spring 2025 conscription quotas by roughly 200%—sending nearly twice as many men into service as the national average. This suggests high mobilization pressure despite public dissent, or that the financial incentives to enlist work, in at least some parts of the country (but these may not be sustainable). Dagestan, with a TFR of 1.82 children per woman, was once a demographic outlier in a country struggling with rates well below replacement levels.

Chechnya stands out for a host of reasons. Having faced political violence and civil war for decades from the 1990s into the 2000s, the population of this essentially mono-ethnic republic was reluctant to join the fight in Ukraine. The war’s unpopularity created a significant challenge for its leader Ramzan Kadyrov—a Kremlin favorite²—who found himself navigating competing pressures from Moscow and his own population. He needed to demonstrate loyalty to the Kremlin by meeting recruitment quotas while simultaneously maintaining stability in Chechnya and preventing the expansion of antiwar sentiment. The reality of the Ukraine conflict was apparent to most people, making voluntary enlistment extremely difficult to achieve. Kadyrov faced a particular dilemma because he couldn’t afford to appear weak among Russia’s regional leaders, yet, in line with “nested authoritarianism,” he was reluctant to sacrifice the forces he relied upon to maintain his own authority within the republic. To address the recruitment shortage, he employed press gangs against those whom he deemed in opposition or miscreants, and implemented cultural manipulation tactics, appealing to Chechen traditions and concepts of masculinity while publicly shaming men who refused to serve and framing military participation as a religious obligation for Muslims. Despite these efforts, voluntary enlistment remained minimal, with recruits primarily coming from marginalized individuals who had lost their economic standing in postwar Chechnya.

The standouts in recruitment involve some of Russia’s other indigenous peoples, according to a report from the Wilson Center, written by Izabella Tabarovsky. Home to the indigenous Buryat and Tuvan communities, Buryatia and Tuva have seen enlistment and casualty rates far above the national average, raising serious concerns about the viability of some of these communities. Alexandra Garmazhapova of the Free Buryatia Foundation estimates that at least 2,470 people from Buryatia have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—a likely undercount based on open sources. In a republic of 980,000 (30% Buryat), that amounts to 252 combat deaths per 100,000 residents. By contrast, Mediazona data put Muscovite fatalities at 1,215—just 9.2 per 100,000 in a city of 13.2 million. Tabarovsky also states that St. Petersburg and the broader Leningrad region have seen levels similar to Moscow, ones that are much lower than in Buryatia.

With 2024 fertility rates at 1.52 in Buryatia and a remarkable 2.31 in Tuva, these once demographic bright spots are now being drained by the frontlines. In effect, the Kremlin is drawing disproportionately on regions whose higher birthrates once softened Russia’s demographic decline. As these communities are emptied of young men, the hope of demographic resilience gives way to a deeper, wartime-driven population crisis.

This creates a cruel irony: the very communities whose higher fertility rates once promised to stabilize Russia’s population are now being decimated by war casualties. As these demographic lifelines are severed, Russia’s long-term population prospects darken further. Russia’s population is already in decline, peaking at 149 million in 1994, to about 145 million today, and is likely to decline even more this century to about 120 million, causing the Economist to label it a “nightmare,” one exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.

Political Fallout and the Risk of Instability

As I argued a decade ago, regimes that hide inconvenient population trends invite political fallout. In the 1970s, Soviet demographic anxiety fueled nationalist policies aimed at boosting Slavic birthrates and constraining minorities. Today’s Russia, steeped in a mythic Slav, Orthodox identity, fears that transparent data would embolden minorities to demand genuine representation—or even autonomy. Secrecy may delay the reckoning, but it cannot prevent it.

By hiding demographic data, the Kremlin reveals its fear that transparent population statistics might empower minority voices or expose the true cost of its Ukrainian adventure. But secrecy is not strategy; it’s a recipe for policy failure and social instability.

The Path Forward

Russia’s demographic crisis demands urgent, evidence-based policymaking—precisely what becomes impossible when the government hides the data. Without transparent population statistics, how can Moscow craft effective immigration policies, healthcare systems, or economic strategies? How can it address regional inequalities or ethnic tensions? How can it fight a war? Will any figures that it releases be trusted such that effective policies can be crafted?

The international community must recognize that Russia’s demographic decline affects us all. A demographically weakened Russia may become more aggressive as it seeks to project strength abroad to compensate for weakness at home. Alternatively, internal demographic pressures could eventually fragment the Russian state, just as it did the Soviet Union, creating new sources of instability across Eurasia.

The Price of Denial

Russia’s retreat into demographic secrecy represents more than statistical manipulation—it’s a symptom of an unlikey, but not impossible, state failure. By erasing its people from official view, Moscow is courting the very instability it seeks to avoid. As I’ve argued throughout my career studying political demography, population changes are among the most powerful forces shaping international and domestic politics. Russia’s attempt to hide these changes doesn’t make them disappear; it only ensures that when the demographic reckoning comes, it will be swift, severe, and destabilizing.

Russia’s suspension of monthly demographic reports and the delay of its census amount to an authoritarian cover‑up of a looming population collapse—making U.S. intelligence assessments and arms‑control verification more difficult while obscuring humanitarian and migratory risks that threaten European stability and U.S.–Russian relations.

The Kremlin’s demographic vanishing act is therefore both a warning and an opportunity. The warning is clear: states that hide from demographic reality risk being consumed by it. The opportunity is for the international community to recognize that supporting transparent demographic data and evidence-based population policies isn’t just about statistics—it’s about preventing the kind of demographic-driven conflicts that have historically torn societies apart.

As George Orwell warned, “who controls the past controls the future.” By erasing its demographic present, Russia imperils its future. Russia’s people deserve better than to be erased from their own country’s official record. The world deserves better than the instability that demographic denial inevitably brings.

Footnotes

1. Rosstat did not announce formally that it would stop publishing monthly demographic data. Nor did it disclose whether this is a permanent change.
2. However, there have recently been reports in the Russian opposition media that Kadyrov fell out with Putin over the former’s lobbying to have his son Adam succeed him as the leader of Chechnya.

(This post is republished from Russia Matters.)