For a quarter of a century, President Vladimir Putin has grappled with Russia’s declining and ageing population.
The demographic crisis predates his ascent to power, with the nation recording its lowest birth rate in 1999, the year before he took office.
In 2005, Mr Putin acknowledged the issue, stating that these demographic challenges necessitated maintaining “social and economic stability.” He reiterated his concern in 2019, admitting the problem still “haunted” the country.
Most recently, on Thursday, he addressed a Kremlin demographic conference, emphasising that increasing births was “crucial” for Russia’s future.
To combat this trend, Mr Putin has introduced various initiatives, ranging from providing free school meals for large families to reinstating Soviet-era “hero-mother” medals for women who bear 10 or more children.
“Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight, and even more children,” Putin said in 2023. “Let’s preserve and revive these wonderful traditions. Having many children and a large family must become the norm.”
At first, births in Russia grew with its economic prosperity, from 1.21 million babies born in 1999 to 1.94 million in 2015.
But those hard-won gains are crumbling against a backdrop of financial uncertainty, the war in Ukraine, an exodus of young men and opposition to immigration.
Russia’s population has fallen from 147.6 million in 1990 — the year before the USSR collapsed — to 146.1 million this year, according to Russia’s Federal Statistics Service. Since the 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea, it has included the peninsula’s population of about 2 million, as well as births and deaths there, in its data.
The population also is significantly older. In 1990, 21.1% was 55 or older, government data said. In 2024, that figure was 30%.
Since the 2015 peak, the number of births has fallen annually, and deaths are now outpacing births. There were only 1.22 million live births last year — marginally above the 1999 low. Demographer Alexei Raksha reported the number of babies born in Russia in February 2025 was the lowest monthly figure in over two centuries.
Russia is trying new restrictions to halt the backslide and embrace what it calls “traditional family values” with laws banning the promotion of abortion and “child-free ideology” and outlawing all LGBTQ+ activism.
Officials believe such values are “a magic wand” for solving demographic problems, said Russian feminist scholar Sasha Talaver.
In the government’s view, women might be financially independent, but they should be “willing and very excited to take up this additional work of reproduction in the name of patriotism and Russian strength,” she said.
