The collapse of the Soviet Union, the COVID-19 pandemic and now the war in Ukraine are pillar events that have significantly contributed to a declining population — a pressing "demographic problem" — for Russia and its economic future, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

In addition to the estimated 150,000 Russian soldiers killed in the conflict with Ukraine, as many as 920,000 citizens left the country by July 2023 over the war. Between 2020 and 2022, an estimated 1.12 million Russians died during the COVID pandemic. And the country is in the midst of its lowest birthrate in more than two decades, according to the report.

"The demographic problem is indeed a very pressing one,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Journal. "Measures to increase the birthrate are a priority of the government and the president. Most of the country’s development goals are aimed at this in one way or another."

To that end, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared 2024 "the year of the family."

Prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moscow boasted the world's third-largest population. Today, Russia is 9th globally with 146 million people. Russia added 2.4 million people to its rolls when it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

"The most successful population program that the Kremlin has had has been annexing neighboring territories, not increasing the birthrate," Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., told the Journal.

Further, life expectancy in Russia was at 70 years old in 2022, compared to 78 in the United States.

"The loss of those human resources is going to compromise Russia’s economic future," Eberstadt told the Journal.

It has also resulted in a shortage of labor that has impacted Russia's military production, forcing Putin to reorient much of the workforce to produce tanks, missiles and mortars, according to the report.

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