Russia on brink of population crisis as over 100 towns with 3.4m people 'to disappear'

Russia is facing a collapse of provincial small towns as local economies struggle to provide work for residents. A Kremlin commissioned study carried out by RANEPA predicts that 129 small towns with a total population of 3.4 million people are at risk of disappearing.

Already over the past ten years, the number of residents in these towns has declined by 314,000. One of the main reasons for the demographic decline is the lack of employment, caused in part by a decrease in the number of small to medium-sized business. At the same time, small towns in the provinces have borne the brunt of military recruitment drives for the war in Ukraine.

The biggest declines in population have been observed in northern coal, steel and timber cities, as well as "peripheral towns in depressed regions", according to the report's authors.

At high risk of extinction are the towns of Verkhniy Tagil (Sverdlovsk region), Trubchevsk (Bryansk region), Inta (Komi), Kem and Medvezhyegorsk (Karelia), Torzhok (Tver region).

In Russia, cities with a population of up to 50,000 residents are called small. According to the 2020 census, there are 801 such cities in the country.

Russia is already grappling with a growing demographic crisis that saw births in the country fall to 1.22 million in 2024. This is the lowest level since 1999 and the rate is expected to plummet further to just 1.14 million by 2027. At the same time, deaths increased by 3.3% to 1.82 million, according to official data from Rosstat.

The demographic crisis looks set to get worse, with the number of reproductive-aged women set to decline steeply.

Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova told a meeting of Communist Party MPs that the number of child-bearing women would drop by 7 million by the year 2046 - from 34 million to just 27 million.

She noted: "Russia lives on a decreasing trajectory of the main reproductive group of the population."

Golikova added that the share of Russian women refusing abortions has increased to almost 25%, but “this is still not enough.”

Russia's natural population declined by over 3 million people between 2016 and 2024.