Low birth rate, Covid pandemic exacerbates historic population fall in Russia
India Today
The pandemic death toll exacerbates the demographic crisis, linked to low birth rates and a short life expectancy, that Russia has faced for the past 30 years.
Russia's population declined by more than one million people in 2021, the statistics agency Rosstat reported Friday, a historic drop not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ongoing demographic woes have been exacerbated by the pandemic with Rosstat figures showing more than 660,000 had died with coronavirus since health officials recorded the first case in the country.
The new figures continue a downward trend from the previous year when Russia's population fell by more than half a million.
The Covid-related fatalities figures published monthly by Rosstat are far higher than death figures released by a separate government website, which is dedicated to tracking the pandemic in the country.
Those government website figures only take into account fatalities where the virus was established as the primary cause of death after an autopsy and shows just 329,443 total fatalities.
The discrepancy has fed into criticism that the Russian government has been downplaying the severity of the pandemic in one of the worst-hit countries by cases in the world.
Russia has struggled to curb the pandemic due to a slow vaccination drive coupled with limited restrictive measures and rampant non-compliance with mask-wearing in public places.
