I am one who sees the recent history of Russia as, more or less, Vladimir Putin's project to re-Sovietize Russia and (if he can get away with it) the entire region. Particular points of interest are Putin's description of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 as a "catastrophe", his utter lack of remorse for his assistance of the Stasi in East Germany, the incredible prevalence of drug use in Russian Olympic teams, the apparent murder of dissidents and journalists with KGB methods (plutonium, Novichok, throwing from windows), and of course an expansionistic foreign policy that seeks to force neighboring nations into submission with tactics that can only be charitably described as "terroristic."
And now, another couple of points of reference are that Russian winter crops (rye, winter wheat, etc..) are failing, just like in Soviet days, and also significantly, the Russian rate of AIDS deaths greatly exceeds that of the United States.
The latter bit may seem counterintiutive, but Mr. Putin is not in reality the traditionalist he makes himself out to be, and calls for a higher birth rate appear to be made outside the bounds of marriage. More or less, "if you're a patriot, get those eggs fertilized by whatever means necessary", and the ugly reality is that this is a very effective way to spread disease. It is, more or less, the same thing that the old Soviets called for in the 1920s and 1930s as formerly robust birth rates in the more prosperous Tsarist era gave way to Soviet depression.
On a side note, I would suggest that the barbarism of Russian (and formerly, Soviet) armed forces may have a lot to do with the fact that divorce rates (and the rate of absentee fathers) were sky-high.
And hopefully our government leaders will recognize the real significance of what is going on here. It may well be that Putin will exhaust the demographics of Russia before he can get very far, but that's not something that I want to be counting on.
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