If current trends continue, half of the population of the Russian Federation in its current borders will consist of immigrants, according to a new Moscow study, a conclusion clearly intended to feed anti-immigrant feelings and, more speculatively, designed to promote a discussion of what can and should be done, including the changing of those borders.
If half of the country’s population in 2050 does in fact consist of migrants, that country will have a Muslim majority, given the share of indigenous Muslim peoples already there. On the one hand, that is a frightening prospect for many Orthodox Russians. But on the other, especially in the current climate, it has more immediate foreign policy consequences.
Were Moscow to annex the two Slavic republics, Ukraine and Belarus, the Russian Federation would retain a non-Muslim majority for far longer, but were it to absorb countries in the Caucasus or Central Asia as part of some restored empire, it would become a Muslim-majority state far sooner.
There is more discussion of the study here
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