Paul Goble
Staunton, May 1 – Like Rosstat in Moscow, regional statistical offices have also stopped publishing data on population size to hide massive declines not only in the overall size of the population but also to distract attention from the fact that this decline has been greatest among adult males, who have died in the fighting or fled to avoid service,
The People of Baikal portal sys that the Buryat counterpart of Rosstat stopped publishing this and 114 other statistical measures last year, but figures released in late 2024 allow one to see just how great the impact of Putin’s war has been (baikal-stories.media/2026/05/01/muzhchin-v-buryatii-stalo-menshe-na-155-tysyach-za-chetyre-goda/).
Between 2021 and 2024, the portal says, the number of men in Buryatia dropped by 15,500 while the number of women increased by almost 2,000. Previously the two figures had moved more or less in tandem, except of course during World War II. At least 4600 Buryat men have died in Putin’s war; the 11,000 additional decline likely reflects flight from that republic.
The portal says similar demographic trends are occurring in Irkutsk Oblast. Prior to the covid pandemic in 2020 and the expanded war in Ukraine, that region’s population fell on average between 3,000 and 5,000 each year. Since 2020, the annual declines have risen to between 15,000 and 19,000, earlier from the pandemic and later from the war.
As was the case with the Soviet Union as a whole following World War II, the loss of so many men in these republics has led to a massive gender imbalance in the prime childbearing age groups and thus is depressing growth still further. Clearly, the longer Putin’s war continues, the greater this impact is going to be.
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