August 20, 2024: NATO nations have noted the way the Ukraine War is developing new weapons and the large number of soldiers and armored vehicles, artillery and munitions expended so far. The losses have been so heavy that Russia has run out of soldiers and some weapons. Russian factories have been able to produce more missiles and other munitions and in 2023 Russia purchased large quantities of weapons from North Korea and Iran. China will not sell Russia weapons, to avoid being sanctioned, but does sell Russia a lot of dual use items that can be used for commercial products or weapons.

meanwhile birthrates are declining in NATO nations. This is a common problem with all industrialized nations. As the economy improves and people become wealthier, women have fewer children. This means industrialized nations will not be able to recruit as many soldiers in an emergency as they were earlier. Noting how combat developed in Ukraine, it was obvious that heavier use of drones would reduce the need for troops in combat. Drones not only find and kill soldiers, but they also seek out and destroy enemy drones. Western nations see future wars requiring fewer troops to fight each other and the heavier use of drones to do the fighting. The side that can produce more drones and has a larger stockpile of them at the start of a war has an advantage.

Russia faces similar, but more serious problems. After 1991 Russia found that it had neither the manpower nor the money to maintain the Soviet-era Red Army so its armed forces personnel decreased by 80 percent in a few years. It wasn’t just the loss of half the Soviet era population or the post 1991 financial difficulties. There were other problems. The post-Soviet Russians were able to force the government to reduce conscription to one year. The government also noted that the Russian birth rate was falling and that eventually reached the point where more Russians were dying than were being born. This dramatically reduced ethnic Russian military-age manpower and revealed how much Russians wanted an end to conscription. That meant creating an all-volunteer military, something that was common in Western nations, especially after 1991. Russia had a few good years after 1991 but was often short of cash and the attack on Ukraine in 2014 and invasion in 2022 found Russia subject to harsh economic sanctions. Russia is having a difficult time paying for its military, which suffered heavy personnel and equipment losses during the first few months of the Ukraine invasion.

The low birthrate problem remains and resists all efforts to deal with this issue. Vladimir Putin has declared it a national priority to increase birth rates and life expectancy. Russia’s post-Soviet population decline is accelerating and Putin wants solutions that do not interfere with his efforts to rebuild the Russian empire by military conquest. Going public with the call for solutions is a desperate and pragmatic effort to fix the problem. Putin has made open criticism of the war in Ukraine a felony subject to harsh punishment. It is no secret that the Ukraine War is the primary obstacle to reversing the declining birth rate. Couples are reluctant to have children during a war because of the unstable conditions. Raising children is difficult enough in the best of times and becomes much more difficult during a war. The birth rate cannot be changed with threats of punishment and penalties for those who do not comply. Putin has a very clear preference for more Slavic children. That means Ukrainian and Belarussian children are acceptable while those from groups that cannot at least pass as Slavic are not. Putin has another problem of substantial resistance from military-age Russian men to military service, even if it means leaving Russia to avoid that. Women of a similar age are also discouraged from having children because of the wartime atmosphere and severe economic problems because of Western economic sanctions.

Putin may be out of options here. Over seven million Russians, mostly military age males, have left Russia since Vladimir Putin took power in 1999. The exodus accelerated when he made his rule legally permanent in 2020. The exodus surged again after Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He described this as the first of several conquests that were necessary for Russia’s national survival. This is not working out well because increased internal repression and external violence have crippled the economy, meaning fewer jobs, while forcing men into the army to fight in Ukraine has caused still more Russians to flee Russia. The departures are substantial and continually reduce the population and percentage of the population that is Russian.

Putin is seeking to increase Russia’s Slavic population and rely less on migrants from former Soviet states in Central Asia to make up the difference in numbers. This is worse because the ethnic Russians have a much lower birth rate than the new arrivals. This lower birth rate is similar to what is happening in most industrialized nations. Despite all this, Putin considers foreign conquests more important than making Russia a place where couples want to have children.