Vladimir Putin’s worst nightmare: the Russians are dying out Now also in the US: bird flu kills hundreds of seals – experts are worried

A few years ago, the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton wrote one of the brightest books of our time: It’s called “Death from Despair” and shows why many people in the US – especially white men without college degrees – spend too much money dies early. Now more than 100,000 Americans die prematurely each year as a result of drug and alcohol addiction or suicide.

As bad as the US numbers are, in Russia “death by desperation” kills many more. The average life expectancy of Russians has now fallen to 71 years and that of men to 66 years. “That’s deeper than North Korea, Syria and Bangladesh,” notes historian Max Boot in the Washington Post.

Twice as many Covid deaths as in the US

At the same time, the birth rate in Russia has fallen to an average of 1.5 children per woman. However, to ensure the survival of the population, a minimum of 2 children per woman is required. In addition, Covid has raged particularly hard in Russia. The Economist estimates that between 1.2 and 1.6 million have died from Covid since 2020. If this number is correct, the coronavirus has claimed more victims in Russia than in the US, which has twice the population.

Finally, the war against Ukraine also takes a horrific toll in blood. The number of Russians killed since February 2022 is estimated at 60,000 to 70,000. More than a million men have also fled the country to avoid being drafted.

If you add all this together, the demographic development for Russia looks pitch black. According to projections, the current population of 145.6 million people will shrink to 126 million by the end of this century.

Vladimir Putin likes to present himself as the savior of the Christian West, but not all inhabitants of this huge empire are Slavs. In many of the 22 Russian republics, the majority is not Christian, but Muslim. Like the whites in the US, who fear they will soon be outnumbered, the Christian Slavs fear to be trumped by Muslims.

The demographic trend is a nightmare for Vladimir Putin. At the same time, he is tempted to prevent this development by incorporating Ukraine into the Russian Empire. Max Boot quotes Stephen Sestanowich, a former US ambassador to Moscow, as saying: “Russia’s depopulation fuels Putin’s apocalyptic vision of his great responsibility. Those concerned about depopulation may find the annexation of some 40 million people in the neighboring country an attractive idea.”

Yet Putin’s nightmare is largely self-inflicted. As Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center in Berlin, points out in Foreign Affairs, the Russian president was unable to capitalize on an excellent starting position. When he took office, the country had more or less weathered the worst excesses of the wild 1990s. Russia no longer had any external enemies. Neither the US nor China and certainly not the EU even dreamed of attacking it.

Thanks to the almost explosive rise in oil prices in the 1990s, Russia also became an economic winner. There was enough money to pay off debts and finance the wages of a burgeoning middle class. “Given this economic and security situation, Russia could have developed into a country with a level of prosperity comparable to Canada,” said Gabuev. “Russia had all the prerequisites to become a prosperous, confident, secure and reliable power in the 21st century – a country helping to tackle the world’s most pressing problems.”

It shouldn’t be. Putin increasingly retreated into a pouting corner, turned his back on the West and embraced conspiracy theories. He felt evil Western machinations behind the color revolution in Ukraine and Georgia, as well as in the demonstrations after his re-election in 2012. Instead of increasing the prosperity of the population through trade, he dreamed of restoring the superpower USSR, but without communism.

With the horrific attack on Ukraine, Putin shot himself in the geopolitical foot. Gabuev again: “Instead of invading Ukraine, the Russian government could have offered the vision of a safe country. A country with a high degree of strategic autonomy and inclusive economic growth that would have enabled prosperity comparable to Norway and a life expectancy comparable to Japan.”

Instead, Putin has put Russia in an impasse, both economically and politically. Russia must sell the oil to China and India at deep discounts and accept rapidly dwindling profit margins. Politically, it is increasingly dependent on the favor of its big brother China. “Russia is slowly drifting towards an economic and political model similar to Iran’s,” Gabuev notes.

So it is no wonder that Russian men are dying of despair and Russian women are hesitant to have children. Putin messed up, and in a big way. In his delusion that he wanted to restore the Russian Empire, he was wrong on all counts.

“He was wrong about the strength of his army,” writes Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. «But also in the army of Ukraine. He was wrong about NATO allies, about Joe Biden, about the people of Ukraine, about Sweden, about Finland, about Poland, about Germany and about the EU. In doing so, he has turned Russia into an energy colony of China – and has to beg Iran for drones.”