March 19, 2023 at 4:00 am
Worse still, the youngest portion of its population, aged from zero to 14, is the same as the portion of the oldest, aged 65 and over.
At the same time, the portion of gross domestic product (GDP) that the federation spends on the military is almost twice what is allocated to healthcare.
In other words, Russia could end up having lots of guns but not enough people to carry them. Things have gotten even worse since President Vladimir Putin launched his "Special Operation" against Ukraine. According to best estimates, during the last 12 months, almost one million Russians of fighting age have left the country to dodge the "voluntary draft" Putin has ordered.
Russia is also facing a growing labor shortage. In fact, without net immigration, mostly from Central Asia and Belarus, Russia may have faced even more biting shortages. Having enlisted over 100,000 men in the first year of the Ukraine war, Putin may need to import, not to say press-gang, people from neighboring countries.
A massive intake of Chinese "temporary workers" has helped, along with the addition of 100,000 "new citizens" from South Ossetia, part of Georgia that Putin annexed in 2008, and some 2.1 million Russophile Ukrainians shanghaied from Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.
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