The Kremlin’s top doctor this week encouraged all Russians to engage in a “sex-at-work” scheme in a move to back President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to counter a growing population crisis.
Despite cash incentives, tax breaks, a nationwide push to discourage abortions and Putin’s years-long attempt to encourage procreation across the country, Russia saw its lowest birth rate in the last quarter-century for the first six months of 2024, reports said following UN findings on worldwide population rates.
Speaking during a Eurasian Women’s Forum on Wednesday, Putin encouraged women’s role in the workplace, but he also reiterated his push for higher birthrates.
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“Proper conditions are being created for women to succeed professionally while remaining guardians of the hearth and lynchpins of large families with many children,” he said, according to report by Newsweek.
The Kremlin chief reportedly said that women can cope with the load of being both a career-woman and a mother because they “possess a secret that men are unable to fathom.”
When pressed by a female reporter about when women are supposed to find the time to manage a family, Russia’s Health minister Dr. Yevgeny Shestopalov said, “Being very busy at work is not a valid reason, but a lame excuse.”
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“There are people who work 12 to 14 hours – when do they make babies?” Shestopalov was asked, according to a report by Metro.
“You can engage in procreation during breaks,” he replied before adding, “Life flies by too quickly.”
Female Russian lawmakers, including politicians Anna Kuznetsova and Zhanna Ryabtseva joined in on the push by encouraging women to maximize their childbearing years by starting families once they turn 18.
One Russian Member of Parliament, Tatyana Butskaya, even encouraged employers to monitor the birth rates of their female staff members, reported Sky News Australia.
Women in Moscow between the ages of 18 and 40 are also being encouraged to receive fertility testing.
“This new push for more Russian babies is consistent with the Russian government’s previous initiatives to improve demographics and increase the size of the future workforce,” former DIA intelligence officer and author of “Putin’s Playbook,” Rebekah Koffler, told Fox News Digital. “While the Kremlin portrays Russia’s declining birth rates in Russia as ‘disastrous,’ in reality Russia’s demographics is not much different from those of most industrial countries.”
The UN estimates that Russia’s population, which currently sits around 140.8 million, will fall by 10 million by 2054.
The United States Census Bureau reports that the number of children per woman in Russia is currently 1.5, though a birth rate of 2.1 is needed to sustain its current population rate, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, as reported by Newsweek.