Szu Ping Chan
XDmitry Nechaev bought a one-way ticket from Moscow to Tel Aviv a year ago.
Two days into Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the 38-year-old businessman abandoned his apartment in the Russian capital and travelled to Israel, leaving his wife, children and dog behind.
Within days, Visa and Mastercard suspended their services in Russia, blocking his cards and preventing him from buying plane tickets for his family. His wife had already got rid of many of their belongings in a fire sale, including their country house and camper van in a bid to raise cash quickly.
In the end, a few phone calls and a friend's bank account in the United Arab Emirates saved the day. The price of five one-way tickets from Russia to Israel for his family? $10,000. "Believe it or not, that was cheap," he says.
In Moscow, he sold high-end titanium bikes internationally. Now, he is making ends meet driving a van in Haifa, northern Israel.
Yet Nechaev is upbeat - he got out.
"There's a joke among Russians now," he says. "Normally when you get on a plane, everyone claps their hands when the aeroplane lands. In Russia, people clap when the plane takes off."
Hundreds of thousands of working age Russians have left the country or died on the battlefield since Putin declared war on Ukraine. Ukraine says its soldiers have killed more than 100,000 Russians, while the Kremlin puts it closer to 10,000.
The numbers may be disputed, but the trends are clear: Russia is facing a demographic time bomb that will make it harder to wage war and, in the long run, keep its ailing economy going.
Sending waves of young men onto the battlefield, compounded by emigration, will result in tens of thousands of fewer births and hasten an already long-term decline in birth rates.
Alexey Raksha, an independent Russian demographer, says the Russian battlefield casualty numbers may not sound a lot for a country of 145 million people, but he believes the war will leave deep scars on an already fragile economy.
"If there are no soldiers, it means there are no men. No men, no sex. No sex, no children. It's very simple," he says. "But we also don't know what the psychological impact is going to be on these people, which will also cause the number of births to decline."
Experts believe Russia may see fewer than 1.2 million births this year if military operations continue in the coming months. This would be the lowest in modern history, according to Igor Efremov, a researcher at the Gaidar Institute in Moscow.
A separate estimate by Mikhail Denisenko, director of the Institute of Demography in Moscow, suggests a year of military service for the 300,000 men mobilised into the army last September and October will lead to 25,000 fewer births.
As well as dying soldiers, talented Russians have been fleeing the country in their droves. Thousands of Russian women have travelled abroad to give birth. Argentina has seen a surge in births due to visa-free entry for Russians, whose children automatically acquire citizenship, making it easier for their parents to get it too.
An Argentine passport allows holders to enter 171 countries visa-free, compared to 87 for Russians.
Others have escaped via Kazakhstan, where many have set up bank accounts and moved on. Turkey, Georgia and Armenia have also seen a huge influx of Russians, while US customs and border protection data show more than 20,000 Russians have tried to enter the US since last October via the Mexican border.
Many Ukrainians - sometimes forcibly - have also moved to Russia over the course of the war, with migration statistics suggesting the overall number decline in the population may be modest.
But while young Russians have been moving out, it's mainly older citizens moving in, according to Raksha, who recently fled Moscow himself.
"On the face of it, things are not that bad, because compared with the 800,000 or so people who have left the country fleeing from the war, Russia has also taken in around one million Ukrainians. But the age, sex and educational structure of those who emigrated and those who immigrated are completely different.
"So mostly young, educated, high-earning men left the country and mostly women with children and elderly people came to the country as refugees from the war.
“While overall migration could be positive, we don't know by how much. But we do know that the economic impact will be very negative because of the number of young people who have left, and continue for decades to come.”
A country that was already facing huge challenges is now staring into a demographic abyss.
Collapsing population
UN population projections updated last year show Russia's population is already long past its peak.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought with it a decline in birth rates and fertility that has seen the population drift slowly down ever since. There were 148.5 million people in what became Russia after the fall of the USSR. It fell by more than five million over the next decade, before an intervention by Putin's government in 2007 that paid mothers the equivalent of thousands of pounds to have more children helped push up birth rates.
"In some ways, Russia was in a better position than other eastern European countries," says Raksha. "They have free movement within the European Union, so many young people in those countries left. But Russians never had the same opportunities, so outward migration is not that high and has never been."
The war has changed this dynamic. Faced with a choice between isolation and starting again, many have chosen the latter.
Five of Dmitry Nechaev’s employees ended up cycling across the Georgian border and through Turkey for three days on the bikes they'd helped to weld after Russia declared a partial mobilisation of military reservists last September.
The UN numbers, which have not been fully adjusted to account for the war, already painted a bleak picture prior to the invasion.
80pc of the country’s population were of working age in the 1990s but that is forecast to fall to around 60pc in the 2050s because of declining birth rates and an ageing population.
Meanwhile, the share of Russians aged over 65 is projected to rise from 15pc in the nineties to 32pc by 2050.
Adjusting for the war presents an even bleaker future.
"Several hundreds of thousands is a massive emigration," notes Raksha. "If you combine all the factors - the hit to incomes that the fleeing of young men and mobilisation will cause and the psychological shock - together Russia will probably see a 10pc decline in births in 2023. “That's going to have a big impact on the economy in 20 years when these people come of age.”
History suggests the impact of war on a country's demography lasts for decades, Raksha says.
"Look at Japan and Italy. These countries lost the Second World War alongside Germany. And you know what? In the last 40 years, the oldest countries in the world have been first Germany, then Italy, and then Japan. What does it mean? It means that if you lose a war, your fertility after that will be low for decades."
'Return to the motherland'
There aren't many things that keep Putin awake at night, but Russia's demographic decline is one of them. A growing population has always been seen by the Russian leader as the mark of a prosperous country.
"From the economic point of view, the demographic problem is one of the most important,” he said in 2021.
If current demographic trends continue in Russia, there will be 30 million fewer people living in the country by the end of the century. That stark reality prompted Putin to order the government to draw up a package of measures this year to increase birth rates and "strengthen our statehood".
The Russian president remained as defiant as ever last week in a State of the Nation speech in which he railed against the West for the best part of two hours.
While he didn't reveal any new pro-natalist policies, there were plenty of threats.
Putin urged Russian citizens to return to the "motherland" instead of being treated like "second-class" citizens in Europe or other countries.
"Everyone must know that the sources of their prosperity and their future can only be here, in their native country Russia.
“I would like those who have come up against the predatory mores of the West to hear what I have to say: running around with cap-in-hand, begging for your own money makes no sense, and most importantly, it accomplishes nothing, especially now that you realise who you are dealing with.
“Stop clinging to the past, resorting to the courts to get at least something back. Change your lives and your jobs, because you are strong people," he said in his annual address to the Federal Assembly.
Observers say young Russians are unlikely to return to a life of military service.
Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warned in a recent blog post that proposals to change the age at which Russian men are conscripted for mandatory military service from 18 to 21 years old, and increasing the upper age limit for conscription from 27 to 30 years old, will mean "young men being called up after earning their college degrees, and trained specialists being pulled out of the job market to have their skills voided by military service".
The impact on the Russian economy is already evident. Analysis by Moody's last week showed the sectors "most reliant on foreign components and investment like car manufacturing have already seen a dramatic drop in production".
Putin's embrace of autarky will force the Kremlin to spend ever greater sums propping up its flagging national economy. State spending already accounts for 33pc of gross domestic product (GDP) and 50pc of formal employment, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which last conducted an in-depth evaluation in 2019.
While the world is taking longer than expected to wean itself off the country's oil, helping the country to stave off a deep recession, fossil fuel revenues will eventually fall. That will make propping up activity harder and harder.
Moody’s says: "Similarly, bans on the export of refining technologies and new foreign investment in Russia's energy sector will make it harder for Russia to upgrade its oil refineries."
Moscow has been pivoting East since the war. Many barrels of oil that used to find their way to Germany, Italy and other places in Europe are now heading to China, Turkey and India at cut prices.
This is supporting growth, but has also forced the Kremlin to raid its war chest of savings.
"Even before the imposition of severe new sanctions, Russia's growth potential faced significant headwinds from chronically low investment, a very weak business climate and challenging demographics," Moody's highlights. It believes the economy will shrink 3pc this year, which would be the worst recession since the financial crisis.
Putin's speech talked about creating a "strong and self-sufficient economy" by supporting "enterprises and jobs, schools and universities, science and healthcare, culture and sports. In this way, you will increase your wealth and will also win the respect and gratitude of the people for a generation ahead. The state and society will certainly support you," he said.
But Raksha, who used to work at Russia's statistics office before he was fired for criticising its handling of Covid data, says the war has changed the outlook for many Russians, including himself.
"Nobody knows what Putin will do," he says. "He may just push the red button and we're all gone."
The 44 year-old says he's glad he has no wife, girlfriend or children, casually adding that he sold his apartment and is using the money to travel around the world.
Even if the war doesn't end in nuclear oblivion, Russia's prospects remain bleak, he adds.
"Russia is now in the middle of a downward decline where the number of women of primary productive age will decline by 40pc between 2010 to 2030. Even without the war, the number of births would have declined. The war will just accelerate this process, but nobody knows by how much at the moment."
Raksha believes that in the worst case scenario, the population could start declining by 1 million people every year.
"People will leave, people will die," he says. "So Russia will become depleted of young men and women over a number of years, and it will be quite old by then. I think economic growth even in the best of scenarios will just stop because of that."
Russia's isolation will mean it will not be able to procure microchips and other new technologies, precisely the sort of technology required to drive economic growth in the decades ahead.
"Russia is going to become like Iran," says Alexander Gabuev at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, but without its youthful population.
Raksha adds: "In the worst scenario, almost all the world will live better and better lives, and Russians probably will live the same as 10 or 20 years ago, and the difference will grow and grow and it will be noticeable in terms of living standards."
'The new Iran'
Entrepreneur Dmitry Nechaev says he's spoken to hundreds of Russians who have fled the country. None with the intention of ever returning.
"These are IT people, engineers, coders, project managers. They are scientists, artists, and actors. Like me, they were paying the taxes, they were spending money, they had several children. Neither the VAT or income tax is going to Russia any more. It's all elsewhere now.
"This is what my country has lost and other countries have gained. There are so many people who have had to leave their jobs and get new ones and many are very well educated and experienced enough that they got them pretty quickly."
Nechaev, now reunited with his wife and two children, aged eight and ten years, says he's accepted that they will grow up in Israel.
"Most of the people I meet are in their mid-thirties," he says. Going back will mean them returning in their forties. “That's too much hassle for a family who's started again. There's little reason for anyone to go back."
Nechaev is reestablishing his company, Triton Bikes, in Portugal with a fellow Russian he met during his escape from the country.
It took some creative thinking to reunite Nechaev with some of the belongings he couldn't carry on the plane, including tools and a beloved beige Land Rover.
"February 2022 was a really, really hard month," he recalls. "I could hardly sleep and work. I was just doom scrolling. I knew it wasn't going to end well."
Today, he feels positive about the future. His employees are all back together again. They've chosen Portugal because his staff, who all have Russian passports, can start work as tourists without having to wait for work permits. Dmitry hopes the suppliers and customers he once worked with will quickly return.
"We've already bought all the machines, we are installing the tooling and we've brought all the materials again."
Nechaev admits he misses Russia, but says that the feeling of safety outweighs any home sickness.
"I feel a lot safer now. And I can say whatever I want. I would never talk like this with you if I was in Russia, I would be too scared."
Demographer Raksha also has no plans to return. He speaks to colleagues every day who say they need him to go back to design the policies that will help to increase the population and rebuild the country.
But he remains defiant. "I sold my apartment because it could be my last year," he says. "I'm doing things that I want to do. I'm just spending money. It could be my last year of life. So why not? There is no future in Russia.
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