The Russian government has started hiding monthly migration statistics

Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service has stopped publishing migration statistics in its monthly report on the “Socioeconomic Situation in Russia.” Demographer Alexei Raksha was among the first researchers to draw attention to the policy shift. Previous reports included data on internal migration, migration with CIS countries, and foreign migration beyond. The document’s methodological section still refers to the report’s migration statistics but does not explain the vanished data. 

In July, the statistics service stopped reporting detailed data on the number of deaths and mortality from external causes (referring to deaths not caused by illness but by, for example, traffic accidents, murders, and suicides). Journalists and researchers had used these data to triangulate and estimate the number of men killed fighting in Ukraine.