The Kremlin noted on Friday that the demographic situation was “catastrophic for the future of the nation”, while the various policies implemented in Russia over the past quarter of a century have not succeeded in boosting the birth rate.
“We live in the largest country in the world, and there are fewer of us every year. The only way to fix this is to increase the birth rate,” the Russian presidential spokesman said, according to Tass news agency.
“It is terribly low today: 1.4 [enfant par femme, ndlr]”This figure is comparable to that of European countries, Japan, etc. But it is catastrophic for the future of the nation,” he added.
Since his arrival in the Kremlin in 2000, Vladimir Putin has made the Russian demographic crisis, inherited from the Soviet period, a priority. While life expectancy has increased, the birth rate has remained very low and far from the generational renewal threshold of 2.1 children per woman.
This demographic situation was exacerbated in the 1990s, due to the very low level of births in this period of social and economic crisis which followed the fall of the USSR.
Now, it is this very small generation that is old enough to have children, but today has very few, which risks accelerating Russia’s decline.
However, the Kremlin indicated on Friday that it did not consider the authorities’ policy of encouraging births to be a failure.
Mr Peskov, asked about his remarks during a telephone briefing, said the low birth rate in Russia was not the result of Russians’ lack of confidence in the future, pointing to the low birth rate in Western Europe and Japan.
He also cited the “demographic gap” caused by the huge losses during World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union.
“Demography is a separate area: the measures implemented do not have an immediate effect, the effect is delayed. Therefore, the situation will remain difficult for some time, but the government is really working hard on this and this topic is one of the main priorities of the President of Russia,” Peskov insisted.
According to the Rosstat statistics agency, Russia had 146 million inhabitants at the beginning of 2024. Between 2000 and 2022, the COVID years, the “permanent” population decreased by about 500,000 people each year, and in 2023 the decrease was just under 300,000.
Russia is not reporting on these military losses in Ukraine, which could also affect the birth rate in the years to come.
According to the Russian site RBC.rua media outlet specializing in economics, Rosstat predicts that Russia’s population will plunge by three million by 2030, or around 143 million inhabitants.