Since March 2025, Russia’s Federal Statistics Service (Rosstat) has stopped publishing monthly regional statistics on key demographic indicators such as births, deaths, marriages and divorces. Nationwide figures are now rounded to the nearest hundred, and data on marriages and divorces are released only on a quarterly basis.

The concealed figures relate to so-called “operational” data. Whether the full annual statistics on Russia’s population will also be withheld remains unclear.

Why is Russia hiding this data?

Monthly statistics on births and deaths by region are among the most objective and revealing indicators of wartime demographic shifts. They reflect both the impact of the war on the population and the mounting losses sustained across Russia’s regions. The numbers also expose regional imbalances: some areas suffer disproportionately high losses, while others report birth rates that defy national trends.

Independent Russian media tracking confirmed military deaths using open-source data have noted stark regional contrasts. For example, the number of deaths recorded in Bashkortostan and Tatarstan is several times higher than in regions like Yaroslavl, Smolensk or Chechnya — up to tenfold, in some cases.

Demographic pressure has long been a priority in Russian domestic policy. Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed the need to raise the birth rate. He recently dismissed the previous goal of reaching a total fertility rate of 1.6 by 2030 as insufficient, calling instead for “expanded reproduction” with a target of 2.3. That level has already been exceeded in several regions, but notably, these tend to be either ethnic republics such as Chechnya, Ingushetia, Tuva and Dagestan, or sparsely populated and remote areas such as the Yamalo-Nenets, Khanty-Mansi and Nenets autonomous districts. For the majority of Russia’s regions, such fertility rates are out of reach — a disparity that becomes starkly visible in statistical comparisons.

At the same time, anti-migrant rhetoric has gained traction in Russia, especially targeting migrants from Central Asia. Regional disparities in labour migration are also pronounced: most migrants concentrate in Moscow, the Moscow Region, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. In the context of a protracted war and heightened concerns about terrorism, their presence can exacerbate social tensions.

In this light, it is not in the Kremlin’s interest to publish detailed regional statistics on births and deaths. Such data risk highlighting the social, demographic and ethnic fault lines within the Russian Federation.