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A plan to address population decline in Russia brought a whole new meaning to work-life balance.

Combining factors like COVID, the invasion of Ukraine and lingering economic struggles from the fall of the Soviet Union, the global problem of declining birth rates have hit Russians particularly hard. To combat projections of a population drop of over 15 million by 2046 according to Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service Rosstat, leaders called on citizens to reconsider how they use breaks during the work day.

“Being very busy at work is not a valid reason, but a lame excuse,” Russian health minister Dr. Yevgeny Shestopalov had said during a television appearance.

Metro reported that the minister was asked, “There are people who work 12 to 14 hours — when do they make babies?”

In response, Shestopalov suggested “You can engage in procreation during breaks. Life flies by too quickly.”

Along with the health minister’s encouragement for workplace rendezvouses, as the country saw its lowest birth rate in 25 years over the first half of 2024 with less than 100,000 births in June, according to Reuters, Russian President Vladimir Putin had promoted policies to allow women to succeed in their careers and have large families.

Speaking Wednesday during the fourth annual Eurasian Women’s Forum, a translation of Putin’s remarks reported by Newsweek found the leader stating, “Russia is traditionally respectful of women. In this regard, our state policy relies on the National Strategy of Action in the Interests of Women.”

“Several initiatives have been put forward toward this end, and proper conditions are being created for women to succeed professionally while remaining guardians of the hearth and lynchpins of large families with many children,” the president added.

Likewise, according to Sky News Australia, Russian Parliament member Tatyana Butskaya called for employers to begin monitoring the birth rates of their female employees while her peers, Anna Kuznestova and Zhanna Ryabtseva promoted women as young as 18 years old begin having children in order to maximize the number of children they could have over the course of their lives.

“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 Defense Intelligence Agency officer Rebekah Koffler, author of “Putin’s Playbook,” told Fox News Digital.

“While the Kremlin portrays Russia’s declining birth rates in Russia as ‘disastrous,’ in reality,” she added, “Russia’s demographics is not much different from those of most industrial countries.”

The latest effort to increase birth rates from the 1.5 reported by the United States Census Bureau, short of the 2.1 rate needed to maintain population levels, followed Putin’s 2022 reintroduction of the Mother Heroine award, providing a one-time payment of 1 million rubles, or roughly $16,650 in U.S. currency, for families that had more than 10 children.

At the time, Koffler had suggested, “Putin is reviving this Soviet-era tactic to offset the impact of his war on Ukraine, in which thousands of young child-producing age men are dying. But the truth is no rational young woman will have 10 children in Russia. First, the economic conditions don’t allow this, there’s no culture of having so many children. Since religion was outlawed in the USSR, the religious groups, like Catholics, who would otherwise have many children, do not.”

Kevin Haggerty
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