Demographics of Russia

• 1. Introduction

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  Russia's population stood at 146.0 million on the 1st of January 2025, down from 147.2 million recorded in the 2021 census. That decline is not a rounding error. It is the most visible symptom of a demographic crisis that analysts have been tracking for decades, one that has been deepened by war, pandemic, and the steady departure of educated workers. Russia is the most populous country in Europe and the ninth most populous in the world, yet it is losing people at a pace that has alarmed demographers and prompted extraordinary government interventions. How did a country that once had the highest fertility rate on earth reach a point where its own statistics agency predicted the population could fall to 130 million by 2046? That question leads through famines and world wars, through the chaos of the 1990s, through a pandemic that struck harder here than almost anywhere else, and through a war that is still reshaping who lives in Russia and who does not.

• 2. The Fertility Collapse

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  In many years between 1843 and 1917, Russia recorded the highest total fertility rate in the world, yet those elevated birth rates did not produce proportional population growth because mortality was so severe. By 1987, Russia was still recording 2.5 million births per year. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union, and within a decade that number had been cut roughly in half: by 1997 births had fallen to around 1.2 million annually, a drop of approximately 50% in just ten years.

  The total fertility rate sank to 1.157 in 1999, near the bottom of a prolonged trough. A partial recovery followed through the 2010s, with the rate climbing back toward 1.777 in 2015, but the rebound did not hold. By 2025 the rate had settled at 1.37 children per woman, below the replacement level of 2.1 and broadly in line with the European average. The crude birth rate in early 2022 reached 8.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, the lowest recorded since the year 2000, while there were nearly twice as many deaths (584,700) as births (320,400) in just the first quarter of that year.

  In February 2026, Russia's Ministry of Health approved new guidelines recommending that women who express no desire to have children be referred to psychotherapy to, in the ministry's own phrasing, foster a positive attitude toward motherhood. Several Russian women criticized the plan when speaking with France24, identifying themselves only by their first names. The population's average age has already reached 40.3 years, one of the oldest median ages in the world, a direct consequence of low fertility sustained across multiple generations.

• 3. War, Pandemic, and Population Loss

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  Between October 2020 and September 2021, Russia's natural population declined by 997,000 people, the difference between births and deaths over that twelve-month span. Demographer Alexei Raksha interpreted this as being primarily driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave Russia its largest peacetime population drop in recorded history. Life expectancy for a child born in 2021 fell to 70.06 years, down from 73.34 in 2019. For males the figure dropped to 65.51 years.

  The 2022 invasion of Ukraine then compounded what the pandemic had begun. The number of Russian men who died as a result of the Russo-Ukrainian war has been obscured by war censorship laws enacted in 2022. In March 2023, The Economist reported that over the previous three years Russia had lost around 2 million more people than ordinary circumstances would have produced, accounting for the combined effects of the war, disease, and emigration. The natural decline of the Russian population reached 596.2 thousand people by the end of 2024, a figure that was 20.4% higher than the equivalent figure for the end of 2023.

  Since June 2025, the Federal State Statistics Service, known as Rosstat, has stopped publishing regular monthly birth and death statistics. That break from a long-established pattern of monthly publication coincided with total birth numbers falling below the previous historic minimum of 1,214,000, a threshold that represented a significant setback for the government's stated natalist policy. The United Nations projects that if current demographic conditions persist, Russia's population will reach 120 million within 50 years, a decline of roughly 17% from present levels.

• 4. Emigration and Brain Drain

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  Over 300,000 Russian citizens and residents were estimated to have left Russia by mid-March 2022, with at least 500,000 departing by the end of August and an additional 400,000 by early October of that year. The total combining political refugees, economic migrants, and conscientious objectors is thought to exceed 900,000. Those who fled cited reasons including disagreement with the war, fear of conscription following President Vladimir Putin's announcement of partial mobilization on the 21st of September 2022, sympathy for Ukraine, and the rejection of killing.

  In 2022 alone, tens of thousands of tech workers left Russia. By 2024, the website of the science journal Science reported that Russia had experienced a multi-year brain drain within the scientific profession, with salaries in the Russian scientific community declining. Many analysts predicted the situation would prove worse than that of the 1990s, though a portion of those who left have since returned. The 2022 war censorship laws also restricted the information available about military fatalities, making it difficult to assess the full demographic cost of the conflict.

  The year 2021 recorded the highest net immigration into Russia since 1994, yet even that influx was not sufficient to prevent an overall decline from 146.1 million to 145.4 million, the largest single-year drop in over a decade at that point.

• 5. Immigration as a Demographic Lever

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  According to the United Nations, Russia's immigrant population was the third largest in the world as recently as 2016, numbering over 11.6 million, the majority from post-Soviet states. By 2024, a combination of declining inflows and growth in other countries had shifted Russia to tenth place globally, with approximately 7.6 million immigrants. There are also an estimated four million undocumented immigrants from ex-Soviet states living in Russia.

  In 2006 the Russian government began simplifying immigration laws specifically to compensate for the demographic decline. New citizenship rules introduced in April 2014 allowed eligible residents from former Soviet republics to obtain Russian citizenship, generating strong interest among Russian-speaking populations in those countries, including Russians, Germans, Belarusians, and Ukrainians. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, most documented immigrants have arrived from Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Belarus, poor areas of China, and from Vietnam and Laos.

  Temporary migrant workers number approximately 7 million. Most come from Central Asia, principally Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, with others arriving from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and East Asia. They work primarily in construction, cleaning, and household industries, concentrated in cities including Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, and Kazan. Moscow's own mayor stated that the city cannot function without worker migrants. Under legal changes enacted in 2012, undocumented immigrants who are caught face a ten-year ban from reentering the country, and workers are now required to demonstrate fluency in Russian along with knowledge of Russian history and law.

• 6. A Multinational State

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  Russia is home to over 193 ethnic groups. In the 2021 census, approximately 71.73% of those who stated their ethnicity identified as ethnic Russians, while roughly 19% of the total population identified with various ethnic minority groups. The proportion of the population that declined to state any ethnic identity grew from 3.94% in 2010 to 11.27% in 2021, a significant shift in a decade.

  The number of people identifying as ethnic Russians declined by nearly 5.43 million between the 2010 and 2021 censuses, falling from roughly 111 million to approximately 105.5 million. Turkic peoples form a large minority spread across pockets of the country, and in 12 of Russia's 22 republics, ethnic Russians constitute a minority. Various distinct ethnic groups inhabit the North Caucasus, and other minorities include Mongolian peoples such as the Buryats and Kalmyks, the Indigenous peoples of Siberia, and a historical Jewish population.

  Russian is the official language and is the most widely spoken native language in Europe; it is also the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the world's most widely spoken Slavic language. Between 100 and 150 minority languages are spoken across the country. According to the 2002 census, 5.3 million people across Russia spoke Tatar and 1.8 million spoke Ukrainian. Experts have warned that Russia's linguistic diversity is declining rapidly. Islam is the second-largest religion, concentrated in the North Caucasus and among Turkic peoples along the Volga-Ural region, while Kalmykia holds the distinction of being the only region in Europe where Buddhism is the most widely practised religion.

• 7. Health, Education, and Cities

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  Russia's constitution guarantees free, universal healthcare to all citizens through a compulsory state insurance program, and the Ministry of Health oversees a sector employing more than two million people. Russia spent 5.32% of its GDP on healthcare in 2018, a figure notably lower than most developed nations. The principal causes of death are cardiovascular diseases. In 2016-61.1% of Russian adults were classified as overweight or obese. Historically high alcohol consumption remains the country's most significant health challenge, even after a stark decline over the past decade.

  Russia has an adult literacy rate of 100% and spent roughly 4.7% of its GDP on education in 2018. Among its population, 62% hold tertiary-level qualifications, the third-highest proportion in the world. Compulsory schooling covers 11 years for children aged 7 through 17 or 18, and approximately four-fifths of children aged 3 to 6 attend pre-school facilities. Admission to higher education is selective and competitive, with first-degree courses typically lasting five years. Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University are the oldest and largest in the country, and Russia hosted roughly 300,000 international students in 2019, ranking as the world's fifth-leading destination for overseas study.

  Roughly 75% of Russia's population lives in urban areas. Moscow has an estimated 12.4 million residents within its city limits, more than 17 million in the broader urban area, and over 20 million in the metropolitan area, making it the most populous city, urban area, and metropolitan area entirely within Europe. Saint Petersburg, the cultural capital, has a population of roughly 5.4 million. Other major centres include Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, and Chelyabinsk. One statistic that captures the pace of current decline more vividly than any projection: Rosstat's own data indicate that by early 2026 Russia was recording one birth every 7.5 seconds, against one death every 13 seconds, a net loss that the statistics agency itself stopped publicly tallying in June 2025.