Russia's population has dwindled by 2.2 million people since 2002 to 142,905,200 people, the Rossiiskaya Gazeta government daily reported on Monday citing preliminary results of last year's nationwide census.
The all-Russia census, the second since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was held between October 14 and 25, 2010.
The preliminary data, made available to the newspaper by the Russian Statistics Service, show that the Central, Volga and Siberian federal districts are the most populated, with over 61% of the country's residents living there.
Compared to the 2002 census, the population number shrank in 63 and went up in 20 Russian regions.
Russia remains a highly urbanized country: the share of urban population grew to 73.7% from 73.3% back in 2002.
The share of men dropped to 46.3% from 46.6%, and the share of women rose to 53.7% from 53.4%.
The final results of the census will be published in 2011-2013.
MOSCOW, March 28 (RIA Novosti)
