Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 3 – At the end of last year, the Russian Pension Fund reported that the number of invalids among men aged under 30 had increased by 17,000 – some 6.5 percent over the figure for 2021. But because such numbers can provide indirect confirmation of combat losses in Ukraine, the Fund has now stopped publishing such data.
Because the overall figures for the number of invalids among Russians continued to fall, the Pension Fund does publish overall figures but not broken down by gender and age, the Vyorska news agency reports (verstka.media/chislo-invalidov-sredi-rossiyskih-muzhchin-v-vozraste-do-30-let-za-god-vyroslo-na-17-tysiach).
Independent Russian demographer Aleksey Raksha says the Fund was either ordered to stop publishing such data or independently decided to do so, fearful of what might happen to its staff if it issued the kind of information it had before Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
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