For 1 / 4 century, President Vladimir Putin has confronted the specter of Russia’s shrinking and ageing inhabitants.
In 1999, a yr earlier than he got here to energy, the variety of infants born in Russia plunged to its lowest recorded stage. In 2005, Putin mentioned the demographic woes wanted to be resolved by sustaining “social and financial stability.”
In 2019, he mentioned the issue nonetheless “haunted” the nation.
As not too long ago as Thursday, he instructed a Kremlin demographic convention that growing births was “essential” for Russia.
Putin has launched initiatives to encourage folks to have extra youngsters — from free college meals for giant households to awarding Soviet-style “hero-mother” medals to ladies with 10 or extra youngsters.
“A lot of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight, and much more youngsters,” Putin mentioned in 2023. “Let’s protect and revive these great traditions. Having many youngsters and a big household should grow to be the norm.”
At first, births in Russia grew with its financial prosperity, from 1.21 million infants born in 1999 to 1.94 million in 2015.
However these hard-won good points are crumbling towards a backdrop of economic uncertainty, the conflict in Ukraine, an exodus of younger males and opposition to immigration.
Russia’s inhabitants has fallen from 147.6 million in 1990 — the yr earlier than the united states collapsed — to 146.1 million this yr, based on Russia’s Federal Statistics Service. For the reason that 2014 unlawful annexation of Crimea, it has included the peninsula’s inhabitants of about 2 million, in addition to births and deaths there, in its knowledge.
The inhabitants is also considerably older. In 1990, 21.1% was 55 or older, authorities knowledge mentioned. In 2024, that determine was 30%.
For the reason that 2015 peak, the variety of births has fallen yearly, and deaths are actually outpacing births. There have been only one.22 million reside births final yr — marginally above the 1999 low. Demographer Alexei Raksha reported the variety of infants born in Russia in February 2025 was the bottom month-to-month determine in over two centuries.
Russia is making an attempt new restrictions to halt the backslide and embrace what it calls “conventional household values” with legal guidelines banning the promotion of abortion and “child-free ideology” and outlawing all LGBTQ+ activism.
Officers imagine such values are “a magic wand” for fixing demographic issues, mentioned Russian feminist scholar Sasha Talaver.
Within the authorities’s view, ladies is perhaps financially impartial, however they need to be “prepared and really excited to take up this extra work of replica within the identify of patriotism and Russian energy,” she mentioned.
Harsh demographic historical past
In Russia, as in a lot of the West, shrinking births are normally linked with financial turbulence. Younger {couples} in cramped flats, unable to purchase their very own houses or who worry for his or her jobs, normally have much less confidence they’ll afford elevating a toddler.
However Russia is saddled with a harsh demographic historical past.
About 27 million Soviet residents died in World Warfare II, diminishing the male inhabitants dramatically.
Because the nation was starting to get better, the Soviet Union collapsed, and births tumbled once more.
The variety of Russian ladies of their 20s and early 30s is small, mentioned Jenny Mathers of the College of Aberystwyth in Wales, leaving authorities “determined to get as many infants as doable out of this a lot smaller variety of ladies.”
Though Russia has not mentioned what number of troops have been killed in Ukraine, Western estimates have put the useless within the lots of of hundreds. When the conflict started, many younger Russians moved overseas — some for ideological causes like escaping a crackdown on dissent or to keep away from army service.
“You’ve bought a much-diminished pool of potential fathers in a diminished pool of potential moms,” Mathers mentioned. That may be a explicit downside for Putin, who has lengthy linked inhabitants and nationwide safety, she mentioned.
Some family-friendly initiatives are standard, like money certificates for folks that may go towards pensions, training or a sponsored mortgage.
Others are controversial, comparable to one-time funds of about $1,200 for pregnant youngsters in some areas. Officers say these goal to assist susceptible moms, however critics say they encourage such pregnancies.
Nonetheless different applications appear principally symbolic. Since 2022, Russia has created state holidays like Household, Love and Constancy Day in July, and Pregnant Girls’s Day -– celebrated on April 7 and Oct. 7.
Final yr, Russia’s fertility charge — the common variety of youngsters born per girl — was 1.4, state media reported. That’s properly beneath the two.1 substitute charge for the inhabitants, and barely decrease than the U.S. determine of 1.6 launched by the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
Discouraging abortion
Some areas have legal guidelines making it unlawful to “encourage abortions,” whereas nationwide laws in 2024 banned the promotion of “child-free propaganda.” The wording in such initiatives is usually obscure, leaving them open to interpretation, however the change was sufficient to immediate producers of a actuality TV hit “16 and Pregnant” to alter the present’s identify to “Mommy at 16.”
For a lot of ladies, the measures make already delicate conversations much more fraught. A 29-year-old girl who’s determined to not bear youngsters instructed The Related Press she sees a gynecologist at a personal Moscow clinic, moderately than a state one, to keep away from intrusive questions.
“Whether or not I plan to have youngsters, whether or not I don’t plan to have youngsters — I don’t get requested about that in any respect,” she mentioned, talking on situation of anonymity as a result of she feared repercussions. It is “a totally completely different story” at state-run clinics, she mentioned.
An growing variety of legal guidelines restrict entry to abortion. Whereas the process stays authorized and broadly obtainable, extra non-public clinics not supply abortion companies. New laws has additionally curbed the sale of abortion-inducing drugs, a transfer that additionally impacts some emergency contraceptives.
Girls are inspired to go to state clinics, the place waits are longer and a few websites refuse to do abortions on sure days. By the point sufferers have accomplished obligatory counseling and necessary ready durations of between 48 hours and per week, they danger surpassing the timeframe for a authorized abortion.
Abortions have steadily decreased underneath these legal guidelines, though specialists say the variety of procedures already was falling. Nonetheless, there hasn’t been a corresponding enhance in births, and activists imagine proscribing abortion will solely hurt the well being of ladies and kids.
“The one factor you’ll get from that is unlawful abortions. Meaning extra deaths: extra youngsters’s deaths and extra ladies’s deaths,” says Russian journalist and feminist activist Zalina Marshenkulova.
She sees the brand new authorities limits as repression for repression’s sake. “They exist simply to ban, to dam any voice of freedom,” she instructed AP.
Curbing immigration
Russia might enhance its inhabitants by permitting extra immigrants — one thing the Kremlin is unlikely to undertake.
Russian officers have not too long ago fomented anti-migrant sentiment, monitoring their actions, clamping down on their employment and impeding their youngsters’s rights to training. Central Asians who’ve historically traveled to Russia for work are trying elsewhere, hoping to keep away from rising discrimination and financial uncertainty.
Whereas the conflict in Ukraine continues, Moscow can promise monetary rewards for would-be mother and father however not the steadiness wanted for playing on the long run.
When folks lack confidence about their prospects, it is not a time for having youngsters, Mathers mentioned, including: “An open-ended main conflict doesn’t actually encourage folks to suppose positively concerning the future.”
The 29-year-old girl who selected to not have youngsters agrees.
“The happiest and healthiest youngster will solely be born in a household with wholesome, blissful mother and father,” she mentioned.
