By Alain Barlut
Posted yesterday at 7:23pm, updated yesterday at 8:02pm
Given the great uncertainty, women of childbearing age risk postponing their decision to give birth for several years. SERGEI ILNIZKY/EPA
DECODE – The war and exile of more than half a million people, on top of the pandemic, are raising fears of a demographic catastrophe.
From our correspondent in Moscow
Is the war in Ukraine post-Covid ordeal exposing Russia to a “demographic tragedy,” as British magazine The Economist recently put it? If it’s too early to say for sure, the “special military operation” decided by Vladimir Putin in February 2022 could further, perhaps severely, weigh on an already deeply depressed Russian demographic. Barring a jump in the mid-2010s, birth rate curves have continued to decline for three decades.
In April 2022, shortly after the start of the war, the birth rate in Russia was the lowest it had been since the early 1800s (Rostat, Russian INSEE). This authoritative expert recalls that the fertility rate in Russia has been collapsing since the late 1980s.
“The number of women of childbearing age will increase between 2010 and…
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