CaliToday (25/10/2025): For a quarter-century, President Vladimir Putin has been haunted by a demographic ghost. In 1999, the year before he assumed power, Russia’s birth rate plunged to the lowest level ever recorded. It was a national crisis he vowed to solve.
Now, 25 years later, the problem is not only unresolved it is accelerating into a full-blown catastrophe, fueled by the very policies and conflicts Putin himself has championed.
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| Photo: A family walks through Red Square in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File) |
As recently as Thursday, at a Kremlin demographic conference, Putin declared that increasing births was "crucial" for the nation's survival. Yet, this plea comes at a time of profound contradiction. Demographer Alexei Raksha reported that the number of babies born in Russia in February 2025 was the lowest monthly figure in over two centuries.
Russia’s hard-won demographic gains from its prosperous years (growing from 1.21 million births in 1999 to 1.94 million in 2015) are now crumbling. The reasons are a toxic mix of financial uncertainty, the disastrous war in Ukraine, an exodus of young men, and a hardline pivot to a "traditional values" ideology that is backfiring.
A Nation in Freefall: The Sobering Numbers
The data from Russia’s Federal Statistics Service paints a grim picture. The nation's population has fallen to 146.1 million this year, down from 147.6 million in 1990 (before the USSR's collapse). This figure is even more alarming given that since 2014, Russia has included the roughly 2 million residents of illegally annexed Crimea in its official data, masking an even steeper decline.
Deaths are now consistently outpacing births. Last year, only 1.22 million live births were recorded, marginally above the 1999 low. The population is also significantly older: in 1990, 21.1% of Russians were 55 or older; by 2024, that figure has ballooned to 30%.
Last year, Russia’s fertility rate the average number of children per woman sank to 1.4, well below the 2.1 needed to simply maintain the population.
The Demographic Double-Whammy: War and Exodus
Russia's demographic history is already scarred by the 27 million Soviet citizens lost in World War II and the societal collapse of the 1990s. This left a small cohort of women now in their prime childbearing years.
The 2022 invasion of Ukraine has turned this chronic problem into an acute crisis.
"You’ve got a much-diminished pool of potential fathers in a diminished pool of potential mothers," explains Jenny Mathers of the University of Aberystwyth in Wales.
The war has hit this "diminished pool" in two ways. First, while official numbers are secret, Western estimates place Russian military deaths in the hundreds of thousands, wiping out a generation of young men. Second, the war and subsequent mobilization triggered a massive brain drain. Hundreds of thousands of other young, often educated, Russians fled the country to avoid the draft or out of opposition to the regime.
This is a particular problem for Putin, Mathers notes, as he "has long linked population and national security." His quest for geopolitical strength is directly draining the nation of its future.
The 'Magic Wand' of Repression
Unable to offer the "social and economic stability" he promised in 2005, Putin's government is now turning to a new strategy: coercive social engineering. The Kremlin is attempting to force a solution by embracing "traditional family values."
This has resulted in a raft of restrictive laws:
Banning LGBTQ+ Activism: The state has outlawed all forms of LGBTQ+ activism, branding it a "foreign ideology."
Banning "Child-Free Propaganda": In 2024, legislation was passed to ban the promotion of a "child-free ideology," framing the personal choice not to have children as unpatriotic.
A Legislative War on Abortion: While technically legal, abortion access is being systematically dismantled. New laws ban "encouraging abortions." Private clinics, fearing repercussions, are increasingly dropping the service. New curbs on abortion-inducing pills also affect emergency contraceptives.
Officials believe such values are "a magic wand" for demographic problems, says Russian feminist scholar Sasha Talaver. In the government's view, she explains, women should be "willing and very excited to take up this additional work of reproduction in the name of patriotism and Russian strength."
A Chilling Effect on Private Life
This ideological war is having a profound impact. Women are funneled into state clinics, where they face longer waits, mandatory "counseling," and "waiting periods" of up to a week. Activists warn this simply risks pushing women past the legal time frame for the procedure.
The 29-year-old woman who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity is a prime example. She has decided not to have children and now sees a gynecologist at a private Moscow clinic specifically to avoid the state's intrusive questions. At state-run clinics, she said, it's "a completely different story."
The state has tried "carrots" like Soviet-style "Hero-Mother" medals for women with 10 children and cash certificates for new parents. But these are overshadowed by the "stick" of repression and the bleak reality of an open-ended war.
"The only thing you will get from this is illegal abortions," warns feminist activist Zalina Marshenkulova. "That means more deaths: more children’s deaths and more women’s deaths."
While immigration could easily solve Russia's labor shortage, it clashes with the Kremlin's ethno-nationalist turn. Anti-migrant sentiment is being actively fomented by officials, leading Central Asian workers to look elsewhere.
In the end, Putin can promise financial rewards, but he cannot provide the one thing young couples need to start a family: confidence in the future.
As Mathers observed, "An open-ended major war doesn’t really encourage people to think positively about the future."
The 29-year-old Muscovite put it even more simply: "The happiest and healthiest child will only be born in a family with healthy, happy parents."