Ministry of Labor: in Russia more than a quarter of war veterans died during the pandemic by 26 percent – in a year and a half, their number decreased from 1.21 million in April to 896,806 in October 2021. The fact that during the pandemic every fourth veteran died, the Ministry of Labor said, Vedomosti reports.
The department said that the reduction of participants and veterans of the war accelerated by about one and a half times. In two years, the number of direct participants and invalids of the Great Patriotic War decreased to 31.4 thousand people – before the pandemic there were 55.55 thousand, the Ministry of Labor added.
As of 2021, there are 865 left in Russia, 3 thousand veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Among them, more than 458 thousand are home front workers, 255 thousand are widows of invalids and war veterans, 76 thousand are former underage prisoners of concentration camps. In addition, more than 74 thousand Russians survived the blockade of Leningrad, more than one thousand people were residents of besieged Sevastopol and 54 people were adult prisoners of fascism.
According to Rosstat, for people over 85 years old in Russia in 2019, the age coefficient mortality rate was 164 per 1000 people, in 2020 —190. Demographer Aleksey Raksha believes that in 2021 the figure may reach 209.
Earlier, at the age of 105, Timofey Marzoev, the oldest veteran of the Great Patriotic War in Russia, died. He took part in the liberation of the Caucasus, in the battles in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia. He met the victory while in Austria.