Russia had a known problem already before the war: there are not enough children. The statistics, for years that insists. And now, young people are fighting in Ukraine and many of them do not return.
-The threat to the future of Russia of having a population that is going to less is perhaps greater than winning or losing against Kyiv?
Doubt flies over Moscow. And the story was told to La Vanguardia, from the Russian capital, by Andrei Kolesnikov (Moscow, 1965), local leader of today's closed by order of the Kremlin Carnegie Fund for International Peace, of the Gaidar Institute of Political Economy and former journalist at the helm of Novaya Gazeta o Izvestia – listed as a “foreign agent” since last December 23, as evidenced by the notice that accompanies any of its public messages since then, as required by law:
-“Here it is an obvious problem underestimated by the authorities for demographers and labor market specialists. The population of working age decreases and the quality of human capital decreases. It is a problem for the future, because young people are leaving or dying”.
His translation: the shortage of workers in Russia means that only in the military-industrial complex are missing, according to details following calculations by local specialists, some 400,000 people. Red numbers that would be shared in many other industries. "Also in civil and high-tech industries," he adds.
All of them are critical sectors in which human capital is essential and is not found. Kolesnikov sums it up as "the second and silent war against its human capital" that Russia is waging.
-And this shortage could bring about the advancement of the end of the so-called 'special operation'?, he is questioned.
-“It is still difficult to estimate its scale but it will not affect the end of the special operation. Putin will continue the war. At all costs, ”he continues.
He, however, recalls the words released internally by a leading demographer such as Mikhail Denisenko, the director of the Institute of Demography of the Higher School of Economics, who estimates that the 300,000 mobilized in the army represent some 25,000 fewer births. And to this is added the emigration of thousands of young people.
In Russia these days the words that were put into the mouth of Catherine the Great in 1767 resonate: Russia not only does not have enough inhabitants, but also has an excessive extension that is neither inhabited nor cultivated.
-And does this translate into an internal resistance to Putin that goes unnoticed? Barely any details of arrests, public protests, etc. come through.
-"Resistance to the regime in the form of mass protests under conditions of brutal repression is impossible, instead there are many acts of individual resistance in various forms as well as silent discontent."
For this reason, he cites OVDinfo, a portal that, one year after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, records 19,535 arrests in protests against the war. Arrests are even reported for speaking out against the war among family members in restaurants or for silently leaving flowers at monuments.
Then there is discontent. By emigration by thousands. Or because of the public voices that put on the table that there are cities that disappear as the smallest population is concentrated in a few. Or because they are in their sixties and seventies who decide the future of the youngest.
- Is there a kind of civil war between generations?, he wonders.
-"There are different conflicts at different angles between friends, colleagues, within families and even within liberal communities between those who left and those who stayed", quotes Kolesnikov. Furthermore, he explains, “the younger population, those living in Moscow or consumers of alternative information on social networks, have a worse attitude towards the war and Putin. The numbers of support, however, remain high in almost all groups.
The historical dependence of the citizen on the State (it is estimated that over 30% live on social benefits and 45% on state salaries) is one of the reasons that are often repeated to explain their submission. “It is not the only reason, more important is the willingness to obey”, he emphasizes.
Does the war rule?
“Putin is unable to recognize what is happening as a real problem: he will simply demand that the government improve its work and the degradation will follow its course. It is inevitable ”, reiterates Andrei Kolesnikov, who in Corriere della Sera summed up his new life after being considered a foreign agent “as wearing a yellow star ”.
