A demographic tragedy is unfolding in Russia. Over the past three years the country has lost around 2m more people than it would ordinarily have done, as a result of war, disease and exodus. The life expectancy of Russian males aged 15 fell by almost five years, to the same level as in Haiti. The number of Russians born in April 2022 was no higher than it had been in the months of Hitler’s occupation. And because so many men of fighting age are dead or in exile, women outnumber men by at least 10m.

War is not the sole—or even the main—cause of these troubles but it has made them all worse.

[It’s not a tragedy if it is self-inflicted. China is on the brink of a steep demographic decline as well. That *should* incentivize both regimes against military adventurism, but it clearly didn’t in Moscow. One has to wonder whether the need to prop up the economy in the long term by seizing more land, resources, and people isn’t what drove Putin to war in Ukraine. That doesn’t pertain in China, who won’t get much of any of the above by seizing Taiwan. — Ed]