Murmansk-population falls another 2,900 people
There are no 653,600 inhabitants in the region, down 2,900 from January 1.
A few hundred people less each month so far in 2024, the latest statistics from Murmanskstat reads.
The trend continues. People are dying in higher numbers than newborn are coming. Those who stay get older, and more people are moving away than new are arriving.
In the seven months period January to July, 3,005 children were born, 179 less than in the same period last year.
In late 1990, the last year of the Soviet period, the Murmansk region had nearly 1,2 million inhabitants. The region covers all of the Kola Peninsula and includes tens of thousands of people living in the closed military towns along the coast where the Northern Fleet has bases for submarines and surface warships.
While Murmansk is one of the regions that face the greatest loss, the trend is nationwide. Over the last few years, hundreds of thousands of Russians have left their country to avoid being sent to the war on Ukraine. Others have left in fear of being arrested under the current wave of repression.
How many young men are killed in the war is a state secret and it is unclear if those deaths are fully included in official statistics. The Barents Observer has previously reported that about half of the 3,000 soldiers in the initial three battalion groups from the 200th Motorized Brigade in Pechenga sent to Ukraine are killed or wounded.
The units are just a few of the many battle groups sent to the war from the Murmansk region.
