Staunton, Sept. 1 – Although the Kremlin has cut back in the number of statistics about Russia’s demographic decline, even it cannot hide the impact of that trend, with senior government officials now admitting that over the last two years, the number of young Russians entering first grade has fallen by 25 percent, from two million to 1.5 million.
This development reflects in the first instance declines in the number of children born in Russia a few years earlier and the fact that the fertility rate in Russia is now far below replacement level and continuing to decline (moscowtimes.ru/2025/09/01/chislo-pervoklassnikov-v-rossii-ruhnulo-na-25-za-dva-goda-a173240).
Moscow is loathe to acknowledge that, and some Russian commentators are seeking to place the blame on the decline by the rising number of children of migrants who can’t pass the Russian language tests now required (nemoskva.net/2025/09/01/v-rossijskih-shkolah-snizilos-kolichestvo-pervoklassnikov-odna-iz-prichin-deti-migrantov-kotorye-ne-smogli-sdat-test-po-russkomu-yazyku/).
But it trying to make that argument, Russian officials are calling attention to other demographic facts of life that they don’t want to admit: migrants are having more children than indigenous Russians are, and they aren’t learning Russian at the speed Vladimir Putin wants them to.
The Russian government may be able to hide demographic statistics, but it isn’t able to hide the consequences of the demographic decline of its population, a decline for which that government bears a significant portion of the blame, however much and often it claims otherwise.
And that means that those who want to track Russian demography will remain far better placed to do so that either they or the Russian government fears – although doing so will require more effort because it will force them to do so indirectly rather than have the statistics served up as easily as many would like.
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