Vladimir Putin is unlikely to be particularly cheered by the latest news about Russia’s birth rate.
The first six months of 2024 saw the country record its lowest birth rate since 1999, according to official Russian data.
Births in June alone fell to 98,600, Reuters reported, in a dramatic 6% drop.
That’s the first time the recorded numbers have ever declined below 100,000 within a month.
Statistics service Rosstat found 599,600 children were born in Russia in the first half of 2024, meaning there were 16,000 fewer than the same six-month period in the previous year.
This does not bode well for the Kremlin, especially as it continues to wage a bloody war against Ukraine.
According to Kyiv’s estimates, Russia has lost 616,300 troops to casualties since the conflict began, in February 24, 2022, and September 1, 2024.
And it’s likely the war will drag on for some time yet, judging from the messages coming the Kremlin – suggesting the combat losses will only rise.
Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the public in March 2023 that, “things will get much harder” in Ukraine, and “this will take a very, very long time.”
It’s no wonder the Kremlin called Russia’s low birth rates a disaster for the country in July.
Peskov said at the time: “This is catastrophic for the future of the nation.”
Nina Ostanina, head of the Committee for the Protection of Families at Russia’s lower house of parliament also told the state RIA news agency, a “special demographic operation” was required to get the population numbers back up.
And, more than nine months ago, Putin himself said all women should aim to have around seven or eight children.
Clearly that message has not filtered down to the Russian public.
Speaking at the World Russian People’s Council in November, he said: “Many of our peoples maintain the tradition of the family, where four, five, or more children are raised.
“Recall that in Russian families our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had both seven and eight children.
“Let us preserve and revive these traditions. Having many children, a large family, should become a norm, a way of life for all the peoples of Russia.”
There’s also the mass exodus from Russia which is depleting the general population.
A report from the independent Russian website, The Bell, suggested earlier this year that at least 650,000 people had fled the country between February 2022 and July 2024, because of fears over the Ukraine war.