Chronic. How many of the Russians of the middle classes have been fled from the invasion of Ukraine? Because they are revolved by the war started by Vladimir Putin, fear for their safety or wish to ensure a better future for their children, at least 200,000 have already folded luggage since the end of February, according to the Konstantin Sonin economist, of the University of Chicago. In April, 70,000 to 100,000 people from the new technologies sector should still leave Russia, according to the professional association of the sector.
Many went to Israel, which facilitates the installation of Ukrainians as Russians on its soil – especially when they are specialists from high-tech. Others went to Armenia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and, to a lesser extent, Finland and Estonia.
This brain drain, preceded by a revival of pandemic deaths – more than 700,000 people have died of COVID-19 since the beginning 2020, according to Reuters – has accentuated a little more the demographic anguish of the regime . Because the decline of the population is one of the obsessions of Vladimir Putin, since his arrival in power. He sees an economic problem as much as geopolitics. During his speeches, he regularly calls the Russians to do more children. The government has introduced a series of incentives to revive the birth rate, such as premiums for couples with more than one baby.
But these measures have never really worked. While the standard of living stagnates, or even declines, since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the first Salve of Western sanctions against Moscow, the Russians struggle to project themselves into the future. The number of children per woman, of 1.5 on average, is less than the threshold of 2.1 indispensable for renewing the population, excluding immigration. He fell sharply in the early 1990s, when a serious economic crisis ruined the legendary savings accumulated by households during the Soviet era.
A ball in the foot?
In 1989, the USSR identified 286.7 million inhabitants, more than in the United States (246.8 million). After the explosion of the communist block, without the former Soviet republics, the population of the Russian Federation fell to 148.5 million. In 2020, it was 144.1 million, compared to 329.4 million in the United States. And, according to the last United Nations projections, carried out before the pandemic and the war, it could fall to 139 million inhabitants in 2040.
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