Russia’s Current Demographic Crisis ‘Far More Dangerous’ Than One In 1990s – OpEd

 September 28, 2025

By Paul Goble

The demographic crisis Russia now faces is “far more dangerous” and will be far more difficult to solve than was the one in the 1990s many are inclined to compare it with and assume it will be solved in much the same way, according to Salavat Abylkalikov, a demographer who fled Moscow when Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine..

Now teaching in Great Britain, he argues that “the key difference” between the current crisis and the earlier one involves migration In the 1990s, many ethnic Russian returned from the newly independent former Soviet republics; but that resource has exhausted itself carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2025/09/russia-new-demographic-crisis).

That resource is no longer available, Abylkalikov says. There are far fewer ethnic Russians living abroad and even fewer of them are prepared to move to Putin’s Russia. Moreover, and this adds to the problem the Kremlin faces, fertility rates have declined as well, reducing the chance that Russia can recover demographically in the way Putin promises.

The demographer’s point is critically important because Putin and most of those who write in Kremlin-controlled media argue that what Russia is facing now is a demographic downturn that will be replaced by an upsurge as Russia goes through the cycles of boom and bust demographics like the ones it has passed since World War II.

But in fact, the downturn of the 1990s was limited statistically by the return of ethnic Russians from abroad; and the current downturn hasn’t been and won’t be. Combined with the falling fertility rate, that means that the cyclical approach Putin suggests and many others accept about Russian demographic development will not lead to the amount of growth they suggest.

Putin’s Russia is no longer the attractive destination for some in the former Soviet republics who might want to leave their homelands. But even if the Kremlin leader were to improve things in Russia, those who are available to come would be predominantly non-Russians rather than the Slavs he wants.

The in-migration of non-Russians could reduce Russia’s demographic decline, but it would do so only by fundamentally changing the ethnic mix of the population, something that is already beginning because many non-Russians inside the Russian Federation have higher birthrates than ethnic Russians do (stav.aif.ru/society/po-dannym-za-2024-god-chechnya-stala-liderom-po-rozhdaemosti-v-rossiihttps://tass.ru/obschestvo/25165991).

Paul Goble

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. Most recently, he was director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Earlier, he served as vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. He has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Goble maintains the Window on Eurasia blog and can be contacted directly at paul.goble@gmail.com .