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“Ecology” that will be overseen by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, according to Putin’s decree. Dealing effectively with garbage became a political issue in 2018 after 25,000 people took part in a protest in
December in Shies near the northern city of Arkhangelsk over the poor state of a landfill – one of the biggest protests since the fall of the Soviet Union that hosts Moscow’s rubbish. Other cities have seen smaller protests over similar issues.
2.11 Polls & Sociology
Over half of Russians have no interest in politics and are disappointed by the results politicians deliver, according to independent pollster the Levada Center, Interfax reported on January 23. Only a quarter of the population (25%) say they are ready to more or less actively participate in politics, and almost three-quarters of the country's citizens (74%) consider themselves not ready for this. Some 40% of respondents do not understand politics and show no interest in it according to the survey. Another 14% are disappointed in politics. 29% of respondents say they have no opportunity to influence events in political life. And only 1% say they see the real possibility of political participation for themselves, Levada found. Of those who are not ready to actively engage in politics, 31% of respondents argue that politics is not for ordinary citizens, 28% of respondents motivate their position by lack of time for engaging in politics, every fourth Russian says that he doesn’t understand anything about politics, and 21% of survey participants are convinced that nothing can be changed.
Russian population put in its first full-year decline in a decade, with net migration failing to offset the natural decline for the first time since 2008. The population of Russia as of January 1, 2019 was 146,793,744 people, reports Rosstat, down from 146,880,432 at the beginning of 2018. The population decreased by 86,688 people for the first time since 2008. In 2017, the population increased by more than 76,100 people. The fall in the natural population has been offset by inbound migration, which covered half of the fall in the natural population last year. Despite the constant “Russia dying” meme expounded by Russia’s critics, between 2009 and 2017 the population grew by 4.9mn people. However, 2.6mn of this growth was due to the annexation of the
36 RUSSIA Country Report February 2019 www.intellinews.com