EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (RUSSIA EDITION): Putin’s War Escalation Is Hastening Demographic Crash for Russia.

Besides casualties in the thousands on the battlefield, the enlistment of 300,000 reservists to join the fight — and an even bigger flight of men abroad — is derailing Putin’s goals of starting to stabilize the population already this year.

Crippling disruptions from the war are converging with a population crisis rooted in the 1990s, a period of economic hardship after the Soviet breakup that sent fertility rates plunging. Independent demographer Alexei Raksha is calling it “a perfect storm.”

Plans by Putin’s government had set the goal of starting to reverse the decline in the population in 2022 before growth should resume in 2030. Yet weeks before the mobilization was announced in September, an internal report drafted for a closed-door meeting showed officials were already concluding those targets were unrealistic.

Citing the consequences of the coronavirus and migration outflows, the report instead proposed a revision that envisaged a decrease of 416,700 people in 2030.

Putin seems to have thought that he could quickly add 40 million ethnic Slavs to his empire, but things haven’t quite worked out that way.