Paul Krugman Called It

[Pat Mustard]

You're boasting of a birth rate that's 20% below replacement rate, in a country very hostile to immigration?

Huh? Russia is 2nd after USA by number of immigrants worldwide

citation needed

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What is more, the source of most new immigration into Russia is other parts of former USSR.  

And most of these "immigrants" were Russians transplanted into foreign SSRs under Russian attempts to co-opt foreign cultures into the Russian culture during soviet times, or their children.

In Ireland we don't count returning emigrants as immigrants.

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Anyway you don't really need high population growth in the age of automation

You need to be able to automate though. Guess what Russia is really bad at doing, mainly because its industries have been stripped of equipment and capital these last twenty-eight years.

That's right, creating automated processes to make stuff.