"The male population ... sees a very low value in human life, including its own. You could say there is a culture of not looking after your own health, your life or security. It's a soldier's mentality, like in war," he said.
With each early death, Russia approaches the day when it will have trouble finding men to protect its mammoth borders and workers to pay the elderly's pensions, the World Bank warns.
"Our forecast is that by 2050 Russia's population could fall by a third to about 100 million people," said Anatoly Vishnevsky, head of the Center of Demography and Human Ecology. "To recover, the birthrate would have to jump very much higher -- to three children per family at least."
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