VILNIUS, January 3. /TASS/. The share of Russians constantly living in Lithuania dropped by 0.8% in the past decade to 5% of the country’s population, the Baltic republic’s governmental statistics department reported on Monday.

"In 2011, 5.8% of Russians were registered in Lithuania and their number equaled 5% of all residents as of the end of 2021," the statement says.

As the Lithuanian statistics department explained to TASS on Monday, this trend follows the general demographic processes ongoing in the Baltic republic.

"Due to the negative growth, when deaths exceed births, the country’s population shrank by 236,000 people, from 3.043 million to 2.811 million over the decade," the statistical department said.

Russians are the second largest national minority in Lithuania after the Poles that make up 6.5% of the republic’s population. However, the entire Russian-speaking population in Lithuania taken together with Belarusians (1% of all residents) and Ukrainians (0.5%) is no less numerous (6.5%) than the Poles.

With deaths exceeding births in the Baltic republic, the Lithuanian population has been ageing over the past decade: the resident’s average age has grown from 41 to 44 years, the statistical data suggest.

In 1989, Lithuania registered a demographic high of 3.7 million people living in the Baltic republic. The Lithuanian population has been shrinking since then. As the statistical data show, the Baltic republic lost 120,000 of its residents as a result of mass emigration when people sought a better life in the West.