SFor some time now, Russia has once more been honoring “heroine mothers”: women who have given birth to ten or more Russian citizens. Vladimir Putin reintroduced the order, which had been forgotten with the end of the Soviet Union, in the summer of 2022. If the president had his way, Russian families would soon have at least three, and preferably five, six or seven children once more: the extended family model should become the “norm” once more, Putin said in his address to the nation in February. In his fifth term in office, which began following the sham election in mid-March, the birth rate is expected to “sustainably increase.” Despite the thousands of war deaths likely to result this year, the Kremlin has declared 2024 the “Year of the Family.”
Russia’s demographic situation was already bad before the invasion of Ukraine. A similarly low birth rate as in Western countries coincided with a much lower life expectancy. The pandemic, in which Russia was one of the countries with the highest excess mortality in the world, widened the gap even further. Now the war is making the problem starkly visible: Russia’s economy is struggling for far too few workers, while hundreds of thousands of men are being sent to the front and at least tens of thousands more – mostly well-educated and in the prime age to have children – have left the country. This thins out an already small generation: that of 25 to 30 year olds who were born in the low birth rate of the 1990s. Because of this “demographic depression,” but also because of the uncertainties of the war, fewer children were born in the past two years than in 20 years.
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