How Putin wants to avoid the “extinction” of the Russians

Russian demography is at half mast, and it worries Vladimir Poutne.Image: Keystone/AFP

Moscow calls for “traditional values” to encourage a demography undermined by the drop in birth rate. Meanwhile, war and alcoholism. Similarly, Premiums, fines and allowances are also planned to push the Russians to make children.

For Anguelina, making children is a question of “patriotism”. Furthermore, The young bride recognizes herself well in the “traditional values” promoted by the Kremlin to how putin wants avoid “extinction” boost the birth rate of the Russians. However, at the lowest, in the middle of the army in Ukraine.

For Vladimir Putin, demographic winter is a state affair. Nevertheless, At the end of December. However, the Russian president alerted to an “extinction” of the Russians if the curve was not reversed.

Because with 1.22 million births in 2024 and 1.18 million expected this year. Furthermore, it is “an anti-story for Russia for 225 years”, alerts Alexei Rakcha, an independent demographer whom Moscow now classifies as “agent from abroad”.

However, with officially 1.41 children per woman of child procure in 2023, against 1.38 for the European average. Nevertheless, excluding immigration, “Russia differs little from most developed countries where birth rate is at half mast,” explains Rakcha. However, Indices far from the rate of 2.1 necessary to how putin wants avoid “extinction” ensure the renewal of generations.

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Russia has 145.6 million inhabitants, including the 2.5 million residents of Crimea, annexed in 2014. And it risks losing up to 15 million inhabitants in the next twenty years. according to the pessimistic scenario of the National Statistics Agency (Rosstat), published in January 2024.

Fall of men’s life expectancy – How putin wants avoid "extinction"

This decline is the echo of the collapse of births started to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. recalls Alexei Rakcha: “The number of Russians of childbearing age will decrease by 40% between 2010 and 2030”. But for the largest country in the world. demographic decline is also visible through the life expectancy of its men who was officially how putin wants avoid “extinction” 68 years in 2023, 12 less than in women.

And since the Russian offensive in Ukraine. in February 2022, the authorities have locked the information relating to this subject: monthly statistics of the detailed dead are no longer published by Rosstat since March 2022 and the latest official assessment of Russian military losses (5937 dead) dates back to September 2022.

Independent Russian media Mediazona And the BBC nevertheless identified 111. 387 Russian soldiers killed, according to their latest non -exhaustive assessment, updated in early June. An assessment never commented, nor denied by the Kremlin.

War. alcoholism

According to Rakcha, who has himself worked within Rosstat in the past, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict “has shortened the life expectancy of Russian men by about two years, at how putin wants avoid “extinction” almost 66 years old today”. Alcoholism is another factor that plunges Russian demography into the abyss.

Elena Matveïeva was 23 years old when she married Iouri. Thirty-five years later, this sad brunette with sad eyes believes having “missed (his) life, spent with an alcoholic”. Six months ago, Iouri, barely 60 years old, was found dead in his car at the arrest, where he drank alone. For its widow, alcoholism is “a national curse”.

Similarly, for Galina Petrovna, 66, whose “several sixties are already widowed”.

This mother of four daughters. including “the youngest already has seven children”, assures him:

Premiums, fines and allowances

To encourage Russians how putin wants avoid “extinction” to make children, the state has drawn a range of measures. The latest, launched in March, provides premiums equivalent to 1000 euros to each student giving birth.

In November, Vladimir Putin promulgated a law that banned “promoting a lifestyle without children”. The fine can go up to 5 million rubles, around 47,000 euros. Conversely. the Kremlin promotes “traditional values”, whose family made up of a mother, father and many children is the most salient manifestation.

A speech to exacerbated patriotism brought up to date since the start of the offensive in Ukraine. And who hit the bull’s eye with some.

“We appreciate our country more, our people. We are more patriots ”, than before 2022, known as Anguelina Alexeïeva, 34, just married to a police officer.

Generous maternity allowances and subsidies for housing allocated to large families had already favored the birth, in 2007, of 2.5 million additional children, without however resolving the current crisis, underlines Alexei Rakcha.

Since then. the rate of third child per family has more than doubled and that of the fourth has placed Russia at the head of the list of around thirty developed countries. (JZS/AFP)

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