THERE IS NO BEAR IN THE WOODS:

President Vladimir V. Putin frequently cites hardy population growth as a pillar of restoring Russia's place atop the global order. "Demography is a vital issue that will influence our country's development for decades to come," he said at a recent economic conference, also calling it an important gauge of social and economic well-being.

There is a pronounced gap, however, between the positive terms in which Mr. Putin and his advisers habitually discuss demographic trends and the reality of the numbers.

Basically, Russians are dying faster than they are being born, demographers said. Given the general hostility toward immigration, the question is to what degree the population of 146 million, including annexed Crimea, might shrink.

The number of deaths exceeded the number of births in 2016 by a few thousand, and the prognosis for the years ahead is poor. From 2013 to 2015, extremely modest natural growth peaked in 2015 with just 32,038 more births than deaths. By comparison, Mexico, with a population approximately 10 percent smaller, recorded some 1.7 million more births than deaths in 2015.

"The statistics and the propaganda are very different things," said Natalya V. Zubarevich, an expert in social and political geography at Moscow State University.

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