The decline of the Russian superpower

There are apparently now plans in Russia for mass conscription to draft many more men to fight in Ukraine. Thus far, over 1.4 million men have been killed or wounded in the Russia-Ukraine War.

Russia under Vladimir Putin is already in crisis – its population is shrinking because of its declining birth rate. Before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia already had a low fertility rate, with just 1.42 children per woman, significantly below the 2.1 children necessary to maintain its population. Because of that low fertility, which has persisted for decades, the population of Russia is one of the oldest in the world with an average age of 40.3 years. Putin’s solution? He expects each Russian woman to have a minimum of eight children!

Was Putin’s invasion an attempt to boost the Russian population by kidnapping Ukrainian children and having them forcibly adopted into Russian families?

Putin’s desperate invasion gamble has failed. His massive military miscalculation in Ukraine has resulted in an even bigger demographic crisis, plunging Russia into a protracted war which is killing Russian men at the fastest rate recorded since the Second World War.

In 2023, The Economist noted that “over the past three years [Russia] has lost around two million more people than it would ordinarily have done, as a result of war, disease, and exodus.”

Fearing conscription, thousands of people once working in high-tech companies, fled Russia in 2022. Immigration into Russia from former Soviet republics has also dropped markedly for similar reasons. In April 2026, Central Bank Governor, Elvira Nabiullina, said, “Russia is facing a labour shortage for the first time in its modern history… The lack of available workers has forced employers to raise wages to compete for staff, which in turn has increased production costs and consumer spending power.”

The country also faces the renewed flight of human expertise – a brain drain, worsened by mass-sanctions and boycotts.

A bloated and unsustainable empire

Russia is also struggling with post-colonial issues left over from its imperial days. The Tsars sought to constantly expand their empire – as the Americans went west, the Russians went east. Interestingly, when the two migrations met at the Bering Sea, the Russians had already spilled over into North America. The two empires struck a deal and Russia sold Alaska.

As the imperial Russian steamroller pushed east from the 18th century onwards, numerous different peoples were enveloped and Russified. Stalin’s Soviet Union consolidated that block, seizing states like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova, which had escaped in the breakup of Russian imperial power.

All this growth was dependent on the illusion of massive Soviet military power which Russia inherited. Once the myths of limitless manpower and massive armaments were revealed, the peoples of the former empire became increasingly restless.

The biggest country in the world suffers the Siberian curse of maintaining coherent control over a country with 11 official time zones. Flying from St Petersburg to Vladivostok takes eight to nine hours, and the Trans-Siberian railway trains take six to seven days. By car or military vehicle, the journey spans three to six weeks – 300km-800km a day.

The collapsing Far East

Attempting to retain this bloated empire with a declining population is proving extremely difficult, especially with the resurgence of the country from which much of the Far Eastern lands were seized – China.

The jewel in Russia’s Siberian possessions is Vladivostok, formerly in an area known in China as Hǎishēnwǎi, and shown as Yongmingcheng on Chinese maps from the 13th century. Before the Russian revolution, 41% of the registered labour force in the then Amur and Primorsk oblasts, now the territory of the Russian Far East, were Chinese.

The actual figure was probably considerably higher. Thousands of unofficial Chinese and Korean workers crossed into Siberia for seasonal work as day labourers. The region’s economy was heavily dependent on this demographic influx, with ethnic Russians often a minority. This drove restrictions in immigration and mass expulsions in the Soviet era, to try and ensure a native Russian majority. Ultimately, this has failed.

The collapse of the Russian Far East is the result of decades of declining population, resulting from out-migration, low birth rates, and harsh living conditions. This has reduced the population by around a third since 1991. This huge territory now has an average population density of one person per square mile!

The young, working class, ethnic Russians are moving to Western Russia, leaving behind a shrinking, ageing population. Attempts to reverse this have failed due to lack of basic support infrastructure like roads and utilities. Harsh climates, extreme geographic isolation, and severe crime rates make daily life incredibly difficult. A massive two thirds of the remaining population report wanting to or planning to leave. 

The declining number of ethnic Russians has been counter-balanced by the growing presence of Chinese and Central Asians. This change in the demographics of Russia’s resource-rich Far East is happening alongside the rapid growth of the adjacent Chinese economy. Consequently, the Russian Far East is progressively being subverted by China.

So, China’s long-term plan allows the Russian Far East to continue to unravel, while sucking up the cheap Russian oil, unsaleable elsewhere, purchased at a heavy discount. Russia is increasingly reliant on its Chinese neighbour’s goodwill to prop up its economy. For China to treat Russia as an equal superpower, when Russia’s economy is a tenth of the size, is simply a convenience.

The ill-advised invasion of Ukraine has destroyed the illusion that Russia is the second strongest military nation in the world, focusing scarce resources and manpower in the west, to the detriment of the Far East of the country.

The bigger picture

Russia, the biggest country in the world, is an economic dwarf when compared to its geographic size. Its economy is smaller than that of the states of California or Texas. Its economic strength is limited; sales of natural resources like oil and timber produce an adequate cash flow, but only before the huge drain of the Russia-Ukraine War is taken into account. There is no international demand for Russian-built household appliances, TVs, or cars.

Ukraine has revealed just how toothless the Russian bear is, increasingly being propped up by Iran, North Korea, and occasionally China.

Trump’s tepid and dismissive attitude towards European military capabilities, and the threat of Putin’s invasion, have had consequences in Europe that neither leader could have envisaged.

A millennium of infighting and jostling for dominance has honed European military capabilities. The depth of invention and capability that carried the Industrial Revolution across the globe still exists in Europe, and increasing collaboration and funding is producing a significant renaissance in the continent’s military expertise and capacity. Meanwhile, Soviet stockpiles of tanks and military vehicles are rusted and obsolete. Sanctions make modernisation very difficult.

The military power of Imperial Russia, then the Soviet Union, was used to enforce Russification on peoples across Northern Eurasia and Asia. The weakness of present-day Russian military power means those people, and those nations, will choose to look elsewhere.

© Andrew Milroy 2026

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