Russia’s Population Collapse Just Hit Critical Levels

Russia is on the precipice of reaching a

very dark milestone. And by the time I

post this video, they will probably have

reached it. Well, Russia is on the verge

of losing over 1,300,000

men in their war against Ukraine, either

dead or critically wounded. And at

first, this might just seem like another

large number, but for me, this number is

particularly significant. And I've

actually been waiting to create a video

as soon as Russia reached this number

because for me this means that Russia

has now lost a number of men that is

greater than the number of people who

live in the entire county where I happen

to live. And that of course is Salt Lake

County in Utah. And this is a

particularly striking visual because my

county is one that you can actually see

completely from a number of different

vantage points. It is surrounded by

mountains. It sits inside of a valley.

And there are a number of different

times where I have been at a vantage

point and I've looked across and I've

seen just this vast cityscape, this vast

civilization before me. And I'm

reflecting on the fact that Russia has

now lost so many men that essentially

this entire valley could be deleted.

That is the equivalent. This is such a

massive impact it's really hard to

quantify. It is causing massive ruptures

in Russian society that really are not

being fully appreciated to the extent

that they should be. If you imagine, for

example, removing a place the size of

Salt Lake County from the United States,

a country that's much larger than

Russia, this would of course have

devastating impacts. You would be

removing a population center that is its

own economy, a population center that is

responsible for many different companies

that are vital to the functioning and

the happiness of people all around the

country. We are so interdependent on

each other within our own countries that

when you remove a large number of people

from that society, it has repercussions

that literally ripple and echo across

the generations. And this is something

that's now happening in Russia. It might

not be as dramatic as removing 1 million

people from one specific area, but in

some ways it might actually be worse.

Because for Russia, these 1,300,000

men that have either been lost or

critically wounded and can no longer

work, many of them, these men haven't

just been lost from one area, but

they've actually been lost from small

towns, small villages, scattered across

the Russian landscape. And not just one

city has been removed or deleted, but in

a lot of cases, the majority of the

population of men of entire towns and

villages is now forever gone from

Russian society. Towns and villages that

will effectively cease to exist because

there are no men moving there and now

all of their sons are gone. What I want

to talk about in this video is the real

scale of what's happening inside Russia

right now. something that might seem

easy to overlook because it's not as bad

as what happened in World War II, for

example, but that doesn't mean it's not

a massive crisis for Russia. What I want

to talk about is how it is changing the

future of Russia in ways that are

unreoverable.

And that actually explains a lot of the

desperation and the tactics that we're

seeing from the Russian government and

why they refuse to end their war against

Ukraine even though they're losing so

desperately. What all this means is that

Russia is experiencing a true societal

shift right now. And it's actually

something that is inevitable regardless

of whether or not Russia wins their war

against Ukraine. Because what Russia has

done by starting this war in the first

place is they have set in motion trends

that are difficult if not impossible to

stop. Trends that ultimately will

destroy Russia as we know it. How that

will actually look, that's hard to say.

But Russia will certainly not look how

it looks today, 10 years from now or 20

years from now. There's a lot to discuss

about this, but it's important to note

that the Kremlin itself is intimately

aware of all of these problems. And it

seems that the Kremlin has now given up

on trying to actually solve them, but

instead they are now moving to try to

manage the crisis. That's a substory in

and of itself. So before we turn to the

rest of this story, let's just take a

quick look at that story. The past few

weeks have seen several unprecedented

attempts at information control coming

from the Russian government. Things like

Telegram, WhatsApp, and YouTube have all

been effectively blocked, and the mobile

internet in several major Russian cities

has been turned offline. There's an

effort to get every Russian citizen onto

the official state controlled Max app

where all communication can be

monitored. And I don't think anybody

would be surprised at this point to

learn that the Kremlin is weaponizing

the private data of Russian citizens

against them. All of this raises an

interesting question. If I were able to

read your entire email inbox, how much

would I learn that you might not want me

to know? I could probably discover your

personal habits, what you shop for,

which doctors you go to and why, who you

donate to, political complaints that you

may have raised against your government,

and even your private financial

information. Now, luckily, I can't read

your email inbox, nor do I want to. But

that doesn't mean that nobody can. And

I'm not just talking about the Russian

government here. For most of us, our

emails are not end to end encrypted, and

our data is accessible to the big tech

companies who control them. And

theoretically at least, it's also

accessible to the governments who could

seek to pressure those big tech

companies in the future. The email might

be free, but that doesn't mean you don't

pay. You just pay with your personal

data instead of your dollars. But

luckily, there is an alternative to this

world, and that is Proton Mail, the

sponsor of today's video. The better,

safer alternative to traditional email

platforms. Proton Mail is built

specifically around privacy and

security, protected by strict Swiss

privacy laws, and it's built with zero

access encryption, meaning that even

Proton cannot read your emails. Proton

also features secure spam filters and no

ads, so you can keep your inbox clean

where it actually belongs to you. And

Proton has actually been targeted by the

Russian government on several different

occasions, proving that they're actually

doing what they claim to do. Did I

mention that Proton Mail is free? So,

you have absolutely nothing to lose by

trying it out for yourself. To get

started now, just head on over to their

website using my link at

proton.me/pallwarberg.

Again, that's proton.me/paularberg.

Thanks again to Proton for sponsoring

today's video. So, let's really get into

this discussion by just being really

clear about one thing. However bad

things might be for Russia right now,

they're only going to get worse. Because

as far as Russia has lost a lot of their

young men, currently the process of

losing the young men has not stopped,

but in fact, it has only accelerated.

Russia's lost a lot of men throughout

the war, but right now they're facing

something that they haven't faced

before. They're facing a Ukrainian

military that is increasingly no longer

feeling like they're on the back foot,

but they're actually going on the

offensive. Ukraine has become so

effective at what they do, they're now

able to hunt Russian soldiers with

drones, even if Russians aren't

attacking their positions. But Ukrainian

soldiers are also much more effective

than they were earlier in the war at