Putin faces ticking time bomb as Ukraine war branded ‘devastating’ for Russia’s survival | World | News
The meat grinder of the front line in Ukraine claiming thousands of Russian lives could be a ticking timebomb for the population of the country back home, researchers claim.
Ukrainian defence figures put Vladimir Putin’s losses at around 800,000 killed or wounded, and the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the “daily average loss rate was 1,570” for Kremlin forces in December 2024.
According to the Kyiv Independent newspaper, the deaths of soldiers on the battlefield could also affect the future birth rate and population of their homeland.
Harley Balzer, emeritus professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University, told the Ukrainian publication: “The impact on Russian society is devastating.
“From Russia‘s perspective, (winning the war in Ukraine) is the smaller problem. The bigger issue is, is it going to be a viable country afterward regardless?”
According to the United Nations, Russia‘s fertility rate is 1.42 children per woman, below the 2.1 per woman needed to maintain a population.
And the World Bank reports in the first half of 2024 only 599,600 children were born in Russia, 16,000 fewer than in 2023, and the lowest overall number for 25 years.
Russia‘s current population stands at 143.8 million, almost four times more than Ukraine which has lost around 10 million people who have left the country since the invasion in February 2022.
Nicholas Eberstadt, who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said: “The Russian Federation was trapped long before its invasion of Ukraine in what I described as a demographic straitjacket.
“Life expectancy for young men is on par with a fourth-world country. Life expectancy at age 15 for a Russian man right before the (COVID-19) pandemic was about the same as his counterpart in Haiti.”
Mr Eberstadt added: “Demographers look at what they call a total fertility rate (TFR) which is births per women, you need basically 2.1 in most countries to maintain your population.”
It seems Vladimir Putin is only too aware of the problem facing the country he has taken into war in Ukraine. In a speech in Febraury last year he told the Russian people: “If we want to survive as an ethnic group – well, or as ethnic groups inhabiting Russia – there must be at least two children.
“And in order to expand and develop, you need at least three children.”
But John Foreman, the UK’s former defence attache in Moscow until 2022, told the Kyiv Independent Putin “doesn’t really care” about his own people.
He claimed: “Putin’s willing to sacrifice absolutely everything for the front.
“And it seems to me that they have just about enough troops and volunteers and others to keep the fight going. It’s not about absolute numbers, it’s about relative numbers, and at the same time, Ukraine is suffering its own problems,
“It’s a race to the bottom, it’s basically which side can stay in the longest.”
