Mortality Rates Rising Across Russia but Faster in Ethnic Russian Regions than in Non-Russian Ones, Rosstat Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – Declining birthrates in the Russian Federation garner much more attention because Moscow officials believe they can counter that with simple payments, but rising mortality rates get less because addressing them requires broad social, economic and behavioral changes the Putin regime isn’t ready or able to pursue.

            But rising deathrates across the entire Russian Federation, reported by the government’s own statistical agency, may force a change. According to Rosstat, the number of deaths has risen dramatically, with that figure up more than 15 percent over the last year in Vologda, theAltai, Sakha, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Kaliningrad, Kostroma, Tver and Yaroslavl.

            Even in the capitals, deaths are up with increases of 15.9 percent in Petersburg and 13 percent in Moscow (fontanka.ru/2024/04/20/73487489/). Notably, deaths did not rise by a similar amount in non-Russian areas, a pattern that some independent demographers say reflects lower levels of alcohol consumption (svpressa.ru/health/article/424145/)

            It also highlights something else: Despite the fact that Moscow has drawn soldiers for Putin’s war in Ukraine disproportionately from non-Russian areas and that these soldiers almost certainly have suffered more casualties, that has not been sufficient to push their overall death rates up as fast as those in predominantly ethnic Russian regions have risen.

           And that in turn means that in combination with higher birthrates among non-Russians generally and Muslim nations in particular than among ethnic Russians, the share of the ethnic Russians in the population of the Russian Federation will continue to decline and quite likely at an ever-accelerating rate.