December 19, 2014. The number of marriages registered at Sverdlovsk Region’s town halls dropped by 1,300 in the eleven months of 2014 compared with a year earlier, head of Sverdlovsk Region Civil Registry Office Tatiana Kuznetsova said at a press conference.

At the same time, the number of divorces rose from 20,295 last year to 20,386 this year; birth rate has remained nearly the same (57,847 children were born in the eleven months of this year against 57,872 children in January-November 2013); the number of deaths stood at 55,055 people (54,546 a year earlier).

‘The decrease in the number of registered marriages isn’t too noticeable: in fact, a more considerable decline might have been expected in the current trying times, given especially the fact that people who get married and have children at the moment are typically the ones born in the nineties: this is generation is in itself a demographically challenging one,’ Kuznetsova said.