Closed Military Towns in Russian North have Lost 20 to 30 Percent of Their Populations Since Start of Putin’s Expanded War in Ukraine, ‘Khroniki’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 20 – Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, the closed military settlements in the Russian North have lost 20 to 30 percent of their residents, a reflection of both mounting deaths in that region as military personnel are sent to the front and the longstanding trend of flight from isolated places in that region, Khroniki says.

            Those figures are estimates reached by the independent news agency on the basis of its contacts in nine closed cities of the Russian Northern Fleet, including the well-known locations  of Severomorsk and Polyarny (chronicles.media/iz-zakrytyh-gorodov-severnogo-flota-s-2022-goda-ischezlo-do-30-zhitelej/).

            While they cannot be independently confirmed, they are larger but entirely credible given that official Rosstat figures which show that since 2022, the population of Murmansk Oblast as a whole has declined by roughly ten percent (thebarentsobserver.com/news/murmansk-region-lost-10-percent-of-its-population-during-the-years-of-fullscale-war/441127).

            Both the collapse in the number of residents of the closed military settlements and the decline in the total Russian population at a minimum will make it difficult for Moscow to back up on the ground its constant talk about projecting power into the Arctic and toward the West in the North Atlantic region.