Russia's 'catastrophic' missing men problem
"Where have all the flowers gone?" asks the famous 1960s antiwar song. In Moscow today, The New York Times reports, the question is: Where have all the men gone?
The answer to both questions is, in part, the same: To the graveyards of soldiers. But a lot of the missing men of Moscow have also fled Russian President Vladimir Putin's draft for his war in Ukraine. In fact, demographers say Russia may not recover for generations, if ever.
"Putin spent years racing against Russia's demographic clock, only to order an invasion of Ukraine that's consigning his country's population to a historic decline," Bloomberg News reports. Here's a look at what demographer Alexei Raksha calls Russia's "perfect storm" of demographic decline:
So where have all the young men gone?
Putin says his recent mobilization drafted about 300,000 men, 82,000 of whom are already in Ukraine. Another 300,000 Russians are believed to have fled to other countries to avoid the draft. The Pentagon estimated in August, before Kyiv's autumn counteroffensive, that Russia had incurred about 80,000 casualties in Ukraine, including wounded troops. "I feel like we are a country of women now," Moscow resident Stanislava, 33, told the Times. "I was searching for male friends to help me move some furniture, and I realized almost all of them had left.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/russia-s-catastrophic-missing-men-problem/ar-AA13LeJM
Heckuva job Pooty Poot.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Come to fear the Ukrainian babushkas,they know how to shoot and are trained to fight.
🌻🌻🌻🌻🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦
