Ethnic Russians, who form the core of President Vladimir Putin’s oft-promoted “Russian world,” are rapidly declining in number, with many of those who had identified as Russian in the past no longer doing so—thus driving down the percentage of the Russian Federation’s population that is ethnically Russian. According to Russian census figures released at the end of December 2022, even though Russia’s population increased slightly between 2010 and 2021, the number of people who identified as ethnic Russians fell from 111,016,896 to 105,579,179, a decline of 5,437,717—or almost 5 percent (Nazaccent.ru, January 5). And, in turn, this decline means that the share of that country’s population identifying as ethnic Russian fell from 77.71 percent in the 2010 census to 71.73 percent in the current one, far below the 80 percent that the Kremlin routinely claims.
Who you callin' mongrelized, Greg? Looks like Russia is on its way.