Suppression of demographic data in Russia
The authorities don’t want us to know what’s happening in Russia with birth and death rates and are concealing more and more data. Are the country’s demographics really that bad?
Otherwise, why keep everything classified?
10.07.2025
Article published on the meduza.io website
Between May and July this year, the Russian Federation’s State Statistics Service (Rosstat) gradually stopped publishing nearly all key demographic indicators. First to disappear were operational data on births, deaths, marriages and divorces by region, then at the end of June, Rosstat refused for the first time to provide definitive mortality data for 2024.
Similar figures for 2022 and 2023 allowed statistician Dmitry Kobak and his colleagues to calculate excess war-related mortality and independently confirm the calculations made by Meduza based on records held on the Register of Hereditary Cases.
Now, such studies are becoming impossible, as are many others that have previously relied on official figures. The cooperative of independent journalists Bereg asked a demographer what the effects of such large-scale censorship are likely to be, and what Russia’s “latest lifetime snapshot” of its demographic picture tells us. Meduza has been finding out more.
First things first: what are the key statistical indicators we have lost, and which of them was the most important?
Publication of nearly all monthly demographic figures has been stopped. Firstly, we have lost absolute numbers, i.e. numbers of births, deaths, marriages and divorces, including breakdowns by region. This is the first category, or operational statistics. And secondly there is annual detailed data on all deaths. Mortality-related datasets will no longer be available due a Government directive.
This was done under a new law, which the Government has used to stop releasing general mortality information altogether. Interestingly, we only know about this thanks to Dmitry Kolbak’s correspondence with Rosstat – this was the only time the agency had offered any remotely plausible reason for its actions. All recent examples where data were taken offline were either under the pretext of some technical glitches, or changes in documentation procedures, which sounded like childish excuses – or not explained at all.
In fact, we have lost everything that used to be published on a monthly basis, except for two indicators: the total fertility rates of all children and for a third child and subsequent children by region over a rolling 12-month period. This is all that is left, apparently because these are Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for regional governors. But since there is no way of verifying these figures, in my view, the risk of data manipulation has increased.
Have civil registry offices joined Rosstat in not releasing demographic data?
Yes. Regional civil registry offices have either blocked access to the tables on civil status registrations they used to publish, or have deleted or stopped updating them, or removed the web pages where the data were posted.
Until recently, many civil registry offices published statistics on registered births, deaths, marriages and divorces. Some even included figures on name changes, adoptions and paternity confirmations. But now, everything that several civil registry offices used to publish has disappeared. All this information seems to have disappeared into thin air. And it happened remarkably quickly: starting from the middle of May to mid-June, virtually everything was restricted.
It is clear that we don’t really know why, but what could be the reason for such a radical step?
It all started when Rosstat failed to publish the usual detailed demographic data for March 2025, broken down by region. Instead, the agency only released the national total, rounded up to the nearest hundred and only presented as a cumulative total from the beginning of the year. And the data from March appeared in May, meaning that its publication was delayed.
Meanwhile, even before Rosstat released these “abbreviated” figures, we saw a significant increase in deaths based on civil registry offices’ data – up to 40% in some regions and averaging 15% across the country. The rise was linked to an epidemic of influenza and acute respiratory viral infections, which hit the country in the spring, instead of in winter this year.
Statistics from St Petersburg’s Institute of Virology show that there was a clear surge in morbidity cases in March, and quite a large one at that. A spike in infections in March would naturally lead to an increase in deaths in March and April, which is exactly what we saw. That, in itself, could well explain everything.
What is the most important thing to understand about what’s happening in Russia in terms of birth rates?
With the birth rate, Russia is still undergoing its second demographic transition. The average age of first-time motherhood (the woman’s age when her first child is born) is slowly increasing, the birth rate for first-born children continues to decline, and the birth rate for a second child, after a drop, now appears to be slowly levelling off.
This year, for the first time, we are seeing a decline in third births as well, even according to official data on birth rates for a third child and subsequent children published on the Inter-Departmental Statistical Information System’s website. This drop is likely the delayed effect of the fall in second child births in 2022, which, in turn, stemmed from the decision to transfer maternal capital payments to first-borns in 2020. It’s the domino effect.
But overall, large families are now more common in Russia than in any other developed and historically Christian nation, especially when it comes to having a fourth child. This acts as a cushion that keeps the fertility rate at around plus or minus 1.4, which is higher than in most of Europe and above average for developed countries.
Russia has moved up 11 places in the global birth rate rankings, but only because birth rates have fallen even more sharply in many Western countries and beyond. In other words, Russia has not surged ahead of European countries over the past three years, it is they who have slipped below Russia.
