Russian authorities block information on Russia’s demographics for fourth year in row - Bloomberg
Russia has stopped publishing monthly statistics amid the Kremlin's war against Ukraine.
According to Censor.NET, Bloomberg reports.
President Vladimir Putin has made it a priority to stop the population decline. But assessing progress is complicated by the government's control over the flow of information, including casualties from the fighting, which has been going on for four years.
Last week, the Federal Statistics Service published a socio-economic report for the first five months of this year without the traditional section on demographics. The latest available data relates to the first quarter of 2025, when the number of deaths in the country as a whole significantly exceeded the number of births.
"Starting from March 2025, there are almost no public demographic statistics. The statistics in full are available only to state experts, who analyze them with the stamp 'for official use only'," said independent demographer Alexey Raksha.
War losses and low birth rates
Russia does not disclose data on war losses, and estimates vary. While Western sources put the figure at around 1 million, some Russian sources put it at around 200,000.
Last year, the birth rate fell to 1.22 million - the lowest level since 1999 - while the death rate rose by 3.3% to 1.82 million, according to Rosstat data released earlier this year. The pace of population decline accelerated by roughly 20% compared to 2023, partly due to the war.
Russia has been consistently closing down demographic statistics. In 2020, during the Covid pandemic, Rosstat stopped publishing operational data on mortality by cause.
With the outbreak of war in 2022, the service reduced the detail of mortality statistics. In May 2025, Rosstat stopped publishing birth rates and other demographic statistics.
Annual data may still be available, but the decision to stop publishing monthly information limits the possibilities for analysis, according to independent demographer Igor Efremov. Demographic data that were withheld in the late 1960s or early 1970s in the Soviet Union because of declining life expectancy only became available again in the late 1980s, he said.
"It’s difficult to say how long the data will be closed off. In the current case, all the unavailable data may be published a year after the end of military operations," the demographer said.
