Astounding fact -- imagine Ethiopia with twice the population of Russia

At Foreign Policy Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that Putin's concern with Russia's projected depopulation is an import factor in his motivation for his invasion of Ukraine. In making their argument they site this astounding "fact" (which admittedly is a projection):

Today, Russia defines its national security by the size of its population, not the extent of its landmass. Putin understands that, in the world of tomorrow, Russia will be a territorial giant and population dwarf. Russia’s population will not only be much smaller than the populations of India, China, or the United States but also one-half of Ethiopia’s and one-third of Nigeria’s. For Putin, this population decline translates into an irreversible loss of power. As he stated in 2020, “Russia’s destiny and its historic prospects depend on how numerous we will be.”/

I'm used to thinking of Nigeria as a big deal because of its population, but the idea that a future Ethiopia may be twice the population of Russia astounds me (but not my wife who says "they [the Russians] all live in St. Petersburg [and the rest of Russia is empty]."

I will definitly have to pay more attention to Ethiopia.

Image: a crowd in Ethiopia