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The demographic situation in Russia was negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the annexation of Crimea, parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and the full-scale war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Russian sociologist and journalist Igor Eidman spoke about this on the FREEDOM TV channel.
“In recent years, the population of Russia has been declining sharply. Moreover, which is typical, this sounds especially wild in conditions when Putin has repeatedly said that the main or one of his most important priorities is demography, this is the growth of the country’s population. A national project was specially invented under Putin, the goal of which was to achieve natural population growth and, accordingly, stop the decline. And nothing actually works out. The trend is exactly the opposite,” he said.
According to Eidman, in the period 2010-2013, when oil prices were high and the situation inside the Russian Federation was quite calm, a trend began for mortality to exceed birth rates.
“There is such a popular term in political circles, “Russian cross.” This is when the birth rate went down and the death rate went up. And as a result, the graph turned out to be such an intersection, such a cross. This “cross” seemed to be starting to come back, but then 2014 happened, the seizure of Crimea by Russia, sanctions, respectively, economic problems, the depreciation of the ruble, and, in fact, the trend went backwards. And then COVID-19 dealt a big blow to demographics, more than any other country in the world. Then, by the way, Russian statistics clearly reduced the number of deaths from COVID-19. But then statistics on population dynamics were published, and it shows that literally millions of people died,” the sociologist said.
He noted that the full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine has led to the fact that Russians are dying at the front, Russian citizens are not motivated to have children because there are economic difficulties, rising prices associated with the war, and so on.
“That is, this whole Putin chimera that he will restore population growth in the country has completely collapsed. And it must be said that partly these are some completely hysterical attempts by the Russian authorities to capture, for example, children in Ukraine… As a result, Putin ran into an arrest warrant in the Hague court. This means that this, too, it seems to me, is connected with this unrealized super-idea of Putin to somehow increase the population of Russia. Since he failed to restore natural growth within Russia, it means that he decided, like some kind of medieval pirate, to capture people abroad, in fact, by seizing and annexing Ukrainian lands, accordingly, adding these people to the population of Russia, and also capturing and take the children to Russia too. That is, he is trying to add them to the population,” Eidman said.
The sociologist believes that Putin thinks like a feudal lord who has serfs and is motivated to increase the number of serfs.
“So he is trying to seize neighboring estates in the form of Ukraine. That is, all his logic is antediluvian logic, from past centuries. And, in fact, within the framework of this logic, he is trying to seize land, trying to seize people in order to increase his own symbolic capital. Since he considers all of Russia to be his private property, accordingly, he is trying to achieve some kind of increase in private property at the expense of neighboring territories, neighboring peoples,” Eidman explained.
Read also: European Commission proposes to maintain trade liberalization for Ukraine
Let us remind you that Putin signed a decree “On determining certain categories of foreign citizens and stateless persons who have the right to apply for citizenship of the Russian Federation.” Such actions violate the norms of international humanitarian law, are insignificant and do not create any legal consequences. The introduction by the Russian Federation of new norms of legislation on citizenship is aimed at depriving abducted Ukrainian children of the opportunity to return to Ukraine.
