Paul Goble
Staunton, May 17 – Reflecting what independent demographer Aleksey Raksha describes as Moscow’s “demographic hysteria” (t.me/RakshaDemography/4990), the Russian government’s state statistical arm has stopped publishing almost all demographic data which shows the country in crisis and not on the mend as Vladimir Putin insists.
In its latest monthly report, Rosstat drops all data on births and deaths, marriages and divorces and statistics for developments in the regions, Raksha says and The Moscow Times reports (t.me/RakshaDemography/4984 and moscowtimes.ru/2025/05/17/rosstat-zasekretil-statistiku-podemografii-posle-obvala-rozhdaemosti-dominimuma-za200-let-a163629
Since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine in February 2022, Rosstat has become increasingly chary about releasing data that analysts could use to determine Russian losses in that war and that call into question Putin’s upbeat claims about increases in births and life expectancy.
But this month’s cutback in the data Rosstat releases is the largest so far and will seriously compromise efforts to accurately report what is happening to the Russian population. Putin may not care about that but even he should care about the fact that this absence of data will make it ever more difficult to design and implement his policies.
As far as independent and foreign analysts are concerned, some data will be available from other Russian government offices such as registration centers and regional governments, but gathering it will be much more difficult and time-consuming and so the amount of demographic information readily available will decline to far less than it was in Soviet times.
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