[tpm]

My intuition is that their official numbers are cooked. Factors that influence the numbers:

- after 2014 the official numbers include the annexed parts of Ukraine

- since 1992 the natural change is negative (with a small interval around zero in 2013-2015), yet the total population was 148 million then and is 146 million now?

- there is some migration but officialy not enough to replace the decline of natural change ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Russia ). The numbers just don't add up, and that's not even counting emigration.

I haven't actually found any credible estimate what the 'true' numbers could be.