今回は「Russia's 'catastrophic' missing men problem」について取り上げます。

The Week:　5 Nov,2022

「Russia's 'catastrophic' missing men problem」:　この世では、見つかりそうに有りません。

"Where have all the flowers gone?" asks the famous 1960s antiwar song

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.

素人目に見ても復活に３－4世代かかるのでは?　

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.

実際は、もっと多いのでは?　

the double blow being that Russian men at "prime child-bearing age" are dying in Ukraine or fleeing Putin's draft, which will "further depress the already low birthrates in the Russian Federation and put the country's demographic future, already troubled, at even greater risk."

日本とは違った意味で少子化だったんですね。

It would likely bring birth rates down to 1 million between mid-2023 and mid-2024, dropping the fertility rate to 1.2 children per woman, a low mark Russia hit only once, in the 1999-2000 period. "A fertility rate of 2.1 is needed to keep populations stable without migration,"

え〜　

The war is bad for Ukraine, too, right?

Yes — and like Russia, Ukraine was already hurting demographically even before the invasion, Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the conservative Institute for Family Studies, wrote in March. "Both Russia and Ukraine have low fertility rates,

だそうです。

Not only will the loss of Russian men to emigration and battlefield death "leave a huge hole in Russian society," but "those Russian men who do indeed manage to return will experience enormous problems," from PTSD and other health struggles to participating in a "proliferation of crime waves similar to those that followed the Afghan and Chechen wars."

確かに。

記事では触れていないのですが、一番の稼ぎ手を勝手に戦場に送っているので、税収も落ち込み、信用問題により一番の稼ぎ頭であった武器、天然資源の輸出先も立たれ、黒海、バルト海はNATOの配下となりまともに外に出られる港は中心部よりはるかに離れたウラジオストックぐらい？

ロシアは２４もの共和国を抱えていますが今の力では、連邦を維持できそうにありません。　

少なくともロシアに明るい未来はなさそうです。

ま、プーチン大統領の求心力も落ちているので、元ロシア関係者の私としては「軍が暴走し戦略核」を使っても驚きません。　ー＞　使っても、軍事的に意味がないどころか、余計窮地にはまるんですけどね～

これじゃ、後輩女子社員の後輩オリガちゃんもますます「眠れない夜」が続きそうです。

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