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this video is made possible by curiosity

stream and nebula watch another brand

new full-length companion video to this

one in my ongoing modern conflict series

that covers the second phase of Russia's

ongoing invasion of Ukraine along with

18 other full-length episodes with over

six hours worth of combined content

covering over a dozen other major 21st

century conflicts all of which you can

access by signing up for the Curiosity

stream nebula bundle deal for less than

15 a year at curiositystream.com real

life floor Vladimir Putin's decision to

invade Ukraine more than eight months

ago is leading not only to the

destruction of Ukraine but to the

destruction of Russia itself tens of

thousands of people on both sides have

already lost their lives over this

conflict and that's an addition to the

more than seven and a half million

ukrainians who have left their country

as refugees and the more than a million

Russians who have left theirs as Exiles

on September 21st Putin announced the

first wartime mobilization of men in

Russia since the second world war a call

for at least three hundred thousand

National men to be drafted and sent to

the front line in Ukraine to fight and

potentially to die within hours of that

announcement the prices for flights

going anywhere outside of Russia

skyrocketed to never before seen raids

as hundreds of thousands of Russian men

suddenly became desperate to leave their

country and Escape but they had and

continue to have very limited options

for escape for months beforehand nearly

every country in Europe and North

America had blocked off their airspaces

to all Russian flights and nearly every

european-based carrier has shut down

their flights to Russia as well by the

time of Putin's mobilization

announcement there were only two

european-based carriers remaining

operating flights to Russia air Serbia

out of Belgrade and Turkish Airlines out

of Istanbul for any Russians fleeing the

country by commercial air to Europe

these were the only two choices to pick

from and so their prices temporarily

exploded to more than 9 000 Euros for a

one-way economy fare ticket out of

Moscow which is more than half the

median annual salary for everyday

Russians most everyday Russians simply

couldn't afford that high of a price to

fly to Europe to escape but it started

becoming increasingly difficult to

escape by land as well by the end of

September Poland Lithuania Latvia

Estonia and even Finland had each taken

the unprecedented step to completely

lock their land borders down with Russia

denying anyone with Russian citizenship

entry for any reason even if they held

valid visas that meant that travel by

land to Europe was also mostly

impossible for Russians fleeing the

country unless of course they wanted to

book it through the active War Zone in

Ukraine the only possible land route to

Europe for escaping Russians still

remaining as of the production of this

video is through the very narrow sliver

of Norway in the far Northwest of the

country Norway has still not shut down

their small border here with Russia yet

and the e-105 highway that leads to it

Beyond mermansk continues to remain open

for now but for most Russians fleeing

the consequences of this war the route

of Norway is thousands of kilometers

away from them in difficult and

expensive to get to at the same time an

estimated 70 percent of Russian citizens

don't even possess as a passport that's

required for international travel like

this and that means that for most

Russians wanting to flee the country

they're only really good options are to

the South and the former Soviet

countries of Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan

Georgia and Armenia where they can all

still enter without visas and some even

without passports as members of the

Eurasian economic Union basically

Russia's version of the European Union

Russians entering into Kazakhstan

kerdesan and Armenia retain the right to

live and work within them making them

the easiest in the cheapest countries

for Russians to escape into as a result

satellite imagery taken on September the

25th shows a huge traffic jam of

desperate Russian Vehicles attempting to

cross the border into Georgia

potentially as long as 30 kilometers or

19 miles in a similar fashion Hues of

Russians and cars attempting to enter

Kazakhstan can be seen in video clips

stretching for nearly as far as the eye

can see hundreds of thousands of

Russians have already made it down to

these four countries and more coming

down all the time but they're not the

only places that Russians are escaping

to in one particularly desperate and

bold case two Russian men evading the

draft acquired a boat in the remote Far

Eastern town of egg vacana and sailed at

nearly 500 kilometers across the Bering

Sea to the American town of gamble on

Alaska's Saint Lawrence Island where

they immediately requested Asylum and

were flown over to Anchorage by U.S

officials for processing many more who

couldn't escape or leave for whatever

reason began searching on Google how to

break their own arms or limbs just in

order to avoid the draft the day after

Putin's mobilization announcement the

term how to break an arm at home became

the top search trend on Google within

Russia in total within merely a month of

Putin's announcement of partial military

mobilization in Russia more than 700 000

people most of them young military age

men have fled the country to somewhere

else abroad more than double the amount

of men that Putin announced he was

planning on having drafted this is also

in addition to the more than 500 000

Russians who had already left the

country before the mobilization was even

announced people of all different kinds

from YouTubers journalists and political

Refuge refugees fearful of 15-year jail

sentences for opposing the War online to

millionaires fearful of losing their

Assets in the west to Tech workers

fearful of losing their Western jobs

alongside many others that means that at

least 1.2 million Russians have left the

country since the invasion of Ukraine

began representing the largest Exodus of

Russians from the country in history

since the 1917 October Revolution and

the Bolshevik rise to power and that

isn't even to say anything of the

unknown numbers of Russian men getting

killed and maimed for life in Ukraine

which according to U.S estimates is

already at least 70 to 80 000 killed and

wounded with Ukrainian losses in life

probably being very similar already

making it the deadliest war seen in

Europe in Generations since 1945 and all

of this loss of people either to Warfare

or to migration is only exacerbating

what was already arguably Russia's and

Ukraine's biggest problem before the war

their populations were each already in a

terminal decline for decades and this

war is only making that problem a lot

worse it could get so bad that within 20

years from now we may not even recognize

either Russia or Ukraine as countries in

the same way we see them today and they

may no longer even exist as we know them

let me explain a little bit what I mean

this on the left is the population

pyramid of Russia while this on the

right is the population pyramid of

Ukraine these graphs are essentially a

snapshot of both countries populations

that reveal the numbers of people of all

ages and genders and they both appear

very similar which is a bad thing at the

top of each you can see these gaps in

people in their 70s the World War II

generation that suffered tens of

millions of people dead in both

countries to be born a boy anywhere in

the Soviet Union in 1923 was perhaps the

single worst time place and gender to

have been born across most of human

history 3.4 million boys were born in

the Soviet Union that year and by the

time these 3.4 million boys would be 23

years old at the end of 1946 more than

two-thirds of them would already be dead

to have been born male in the Soviet

Union in 1923 you had less than a one in

three chance of surviving beyond your

23rd birthday the loss and life of so

many young people like this throughout

the 1930s and 40s meant that a lot of

young people at that time in both

Ukraine and Russia were never able to

have any children and that meant the

kids they never had simply didn't exist

around 20 years later when they were

normally also be having their own kids

causing a population hit or echo of the

Lost World War II generation around here

in the mid to late 1960s that reduced

their population equivalent of gen xers

these Echoes of the Lost World War II

generation continue to Ripple across

both Russian and Ukrainian Society about

every 20 to 25 years but the two most

recent ripples hitting the Zoomers and

whatever generation is being born now

will be called have come almost

precisely at times of other great

National crises which only exacer their

problems for both countries populations

in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed just

as the second echo of the Lost World War

II generation was starting with a

collapse in soviet-era state services

and structures came a rocketing in the

rates of alcoholism opioid use suicides

crime and HIV AIDS that plagued the

populations of both Ukraine and Russia

alike for years afterwards and caused

each of their life expectancies

especially for men to plummet throughout

the mid-1990s and early 2000s the life

expectancy for Russian and Ukrainian men

alike were 17 years fewer than men over

in Western Europe and 13 years fewer

than their female counterparts they were

nearly On a par with men in Afghanistan

and many sub-Saharan African nations

despite being at peace and at the same

time rates of migration abroad following

the collapse of the Iron Curtain and

communism exploded as millions of

ukrainians and Russians sought out

better opportunities for themselves and

their families abroad over in the west

and simultaneously is the death and

migration rates were skyrocketing in the

90s the numbers of births to replace

them were plummeting a situation which

continues to this day Ukrainian women

even before The Invasion were only

having an average of 1.16 children each

the second lowest rate of birth anywhere

in the world just behind South Korea and

well well beneath the natural population

replacement level of 2.1 births per

woman and unlike many Western countries

that make up for their own low levels of

birth with high levels of immigration

Ukraine has had a net negative rate of

migration for decades with many times

more people leaving every year than

entering so naturally as a result of all

these factors the population of Ukraine

has literally decreased every single

year since 1993. down from a peak of

nearly 52 million people right at the

end of the Cold War to just over 41

million immediately before The Invasion

when also factoring in the two and a

half million people in Crimea who were

lost to the Russians in 2014 over

overall this represents a crash of

nearly 20 percent of the Ukrainian

population in only 30 years and Russia's

situation isn't that much better plagued

with largely the same societal and

medical issues as Ukraine following the

Soviet collapse in the 30 years now

since 1992 Russia has only ever seen

three years of population growth between

2013 and 2015. while every single other

year has been nothing but continuous

decline with a current birth rate of 1.5

children per woman overall and a

slightly positive immigration rate of

people mostly coming from Central Asia

the Russians have been losing people at

a slower rate than Ukraine but they've

still been losing people and the

official numbers of births across Russia

are also fairly deceiving because Russia

is a multi-ethnic country and the ethnic

Russians themselves are having far fewer

children than their ethnic minorities

are this is a map of all the oblasts

republics and provinces of Russia

colored and numbered by birth rate seen

a decade ago in 2012 and this is a map

of all of Russia's various ethnic groups

and as you can see the regions of higher

birth rates almost identically overlap

with the regions of Russia's various

ethnic minorities like in briaria Saka

tuva Dagestan chechnya the north

Caucasus and tartarstan many of these

ethnically distinct regions of Russia

already enjoy a large degree of autonomy

from the central government in Moscow

and almost operate like

quasi-independent countries and some of

them like chechnya and Dagestan have

previously fought bloody wars of

independence from Russia in very recent

history that failed but may not fail

again as the population of Russians

continues to decline while the

populations of these groups continues to

increase they may demand more autonomy

from Moscow or even Independence once

again and if one of them ever becomes

successful in the future like chechnya

it could trigger a cascading effect of

more and more of the other internal

republics declaring their independence

as well and lead to a disillusion or

even collapse across the Russian

Federation and while that might seem

unlikely right now remember that Russia

has been a multi-ethnic Empire for

centuries and has already collapsed

twice in the previous Century in 1917

and again in 1991 there is no guarantee

with its population crisis and badly

going war in Ukraine that it won't or

can't happen sometime again this Century

but even with the seizure of Crimea from

Ukraine in 2014 that theoretically added

two and a half million people into

Russia Russia's overall population today

is still lower than it was before the

collapse of the Soviet Union by nearly a

million people which wasn't helped out

at all by the years of the covid-19

pandemic in 2020 and 2021 alone due to

excess covid-19 deaths in a still very

low birth and migration rate the Russian

population lost 1.7 million people the

largest loss of people ever in Russia

during peacetime and the largest loss in

general since the second world war and

now in 2022 with the unleashing of the

biggest war seen in Russian Ukraine

since the second world war this

population problem for both of them that

has been going on for the past 30 years

now is only going to get way way worse

than it even already was for Ukraine at

least 7.6 million people have evacuated

the country and become refugees since

the invasion began meaning that nearly

one in five ukrainians before The

Invasion have left the country in less

than eight months that is a similar loss

in population the Ukraine experienced

over 30 years between the collapse of

the Soviet Union and the Russian

invasion itself and implies that there's

only around 33 and a half million

ukrainians remaining within the country

right now nearly 20 million less than

there were immediately after the Soviet

collapse and of course that is to say

nothing of the unknown numbers of

Ukrainian soldiers and civilians alike

who have lost their lives or become

catastrophically injured since the

invasion began which is almost certainly

a very high number stretching into the

tens to hundreds of thousands Ukraine

will never be the same again after this

war is over even if they do push all the

way ahead to Ultimate Victory and while

the raw numbers of Russia's Exiles

leaving the country are nowhere near as

large or catastrophic as Ukraine's

refugees they're still pretty bad for

Russia's internal demographics remember

that the vast majority of the 1.2

million Russians who have already left

so far are either Highly Educated or

young and especially are young men

before The Invasion Russia had about 33

million young men between the ages of 16

and 49 who could theoretically be

capable of military service

conservatively estimating that around

800 000 of those men have since left the

country and at least 70 000 others have

become killed or wounded in Ukraine so

far that is nearly three percent of

Russia's total supply of men younger

than 49 who will no longer contribute to

the economy or the military so far as

the war in Ukraine continues to drag on

and casualties continue to down up Putin

will be forced into calling in more

draftees and conscripts to replace the

losses and that means that more and more

draft age men are going to be leaving

the country to escape it in order to

stop them from leaving Russia will

eventually be left with little other

choice than a shut down their borders

completely like during the Soviet era

and dramatically increase repression and

surveillance at home which will lead to

people becoming even more desperate to

leave and Escape as Russia descends more

and more into the authoritarianism and

even totalitarianism of the past Russia

has already lost more people this year

than it has in any other year since

World War II breaking its own record for

that that was only set last year in 2021

how many more will it in Ukraine lose by

the time the war is over and will either

of them with historically low birth and

migration rates ever be able to actually

recover I don't know the answer to

either of those questions but it does

appear that Putin is using the invasion

of Ukraine to try and expand Russia's

population and solve some of his own

country's problem within days of

ordering the mobilization on September

the 30th Russia unilaterally announced

their annexations of four Ukrainian

oblasts luhansk Donetsk zaparesia and

her son collectively representing about

15 percent of Ukraine's total territory

and the largest annexation or conquest

of land seen in Europe since the second

world war only one other country in the

world has so far recognized these

Russian annexations as legitimate North

Korea which I guess is unsurprising and

despite declaring them as Russian

territory the Russians themselves only

occupy parts of each with the Ukrainian

military still in control of large

sections of each including the capital

of the zaparizedia blast but by

declaring these territories as integral

parts of Russia Putin has given himself

the legal ability to deploy freshly

drafted conscripts to them to fight

under Russian law conscripts cannot

legally be sent to fight in Wars abroad

and may only be you used to defend the

territorial Integrity of Russia itself

so now that Russia has declared these

oblasts as parts of Russia the hundreds

of thousands of men being drafted can

now legally be sent there to fight

against the ukrainians and moreover

annexing them is stealing about 9

million civilians away from Ukraine and

forcibly adding them into Russia which

in Putin's mind may be sufficient

numbers to replace the people that his

country is losing to casualties and

Exiles but that's of course assuming

that Ukraine being increasingly well

supplied with arms from the West won't

simply just recapture them and take all

those people back which continues to

remain a possible if not even plausible

scenario of course there's other reasons

and explanations behind Putin's decision

to invade Ukraine and escalate the

conflict further from Ukraine's recently

discovered oil and gas reserves to

Russia's own desire to expand their

territory towards more geographically

defensible Frontiers but regardless of

Putin's justifications the war in

Ukraine is among the darkest chapters of

21 first century history so far and it

is partially a consequence of Russia's

own internal demographic crisis that has

been going on for decades now but

unfortunately if I produced videos

covering the war itself on YouTube with

the full details of what's actually

happening on the ground and why it's all

happening the disturbing violent and

controversial details of discussing a

catastrophic ongoing War what caused the

videos to become demonetized and age

restricted which is something I

completely understand and frankly agree

with I don't believe ads should be shown

alongside suffering and tragedy but it

does ultimately mean that YouTube's

algorithm wouldn't promote these videos

to you because of their age restriction

and that means that you simply wouldn't

ever see them here and that's why

instead I created yet another

full-length companion video to this one

in my ongoing modern conflict series

that I uploaded directly to nebula

titled Russia's invasion of Ukraine

phase two this episode covers what

appears to be the second phase of the

Russian invasion taking place

immediately after my first episode on

this conflict that I released last month

that covers the invasion's first phase

and why the Russian army failed in its

initial Blitzkrieg and goal of capturing

the Ukrainian Capital Kiev this second

episode I produced for the ongoing

Ukraine War covers how the Russian and

Ukrainian armies entered into a long

grinding stalemate for months and then

how the ukrainians managed to defy all

the odds and push back against the

Russians reclaiming thousands of square

kilometers worth of their occupy

territory in days and seizing the

momentum that led Putin to announce his

country's military mobilization just

last month as you've probably heard by

now nebula is home to tons of exclusive

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conflict series with 18 other

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Russia's previous invasion of Georgia

back in 2008 to this one covering the

ongoing Chinese genocide against the

uyghur people in xinjiang to this one

covering Russia's military intervention

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I'm releasing new modern conflicts

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month and of course the reason why all

of these videos are only available on

nebula in the first place is because

they just wouldn't ever work here on

YouTube and would never be able to be

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Works in relation to highly

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