Russia saw a historic dip in its population in 2021. According to a report by the agency Rosstat, Russia saw a decline of more than one million people in 2021.
A looming demographic crisis has been made worse by the coronavirus outbreak, with Rosstat statistics showing more than 6,60,000 have died since the Russian health officials recorded the first case of Covid.
2021's figures are in line with the previous year's when Russia's population decreased by more than a half-million.
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The downward population trend is mainly because of the generation now becoming parents was born in the 1990s, when the birth rate plummeted due to economic uncertainty following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Currently, the average number of births per woman is roughly 1.5, significantly below the 2.1 required to renew the population.