Russia's birth rates have been falling for decades, and the war in Ukraine has made it worse.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is urging Russians to have more children.
"Large families must become the norm," Putin said in a speech Tuesday.
Russian birth rates are falling amid war in Ukraine and a deepening economic crisis.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is urging women to have as many as eight children as the number of dead Russian soldiers continues to rise in his war with Ukraine, worsening the country's population crisis.
Addressing the World Russian People's Council in Moscow on Tuesday, Putin said the country must return to a time when large families were the norm.
"Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, had seven, eight, or even more children," Putin said.
I find it hard to imagine wanting to have kids just so your dictator has more meat to feed into his meat grinder. Perhaps the only good news is Putin hopefully doesn't have 18 more years in him, so the kids won't have to deal with him directly, but who knows who will sit in the throne next...
I doesn't work either. Appeals to nationalism, religion, and even straight up paying and providing luxury benefits to people, in order to have them start having more kids just did nothing in the long run. The world is different. Your children are more likely to become independent adults when you put your resources into a smaller number of children. The cost/benefits ratio of having large families to produce stability, and increase the chances at least one child will be successful, has completely reverse from 100+ years ago.
I don't know if or when they ended the Maternity Medal, Order of Maternal Glory, and Mother Heroine awards for having large families in Russia. I don't know much about the programs, just what a friend who emigrated told me about them (and what wikipedia says)
You're already projecting compassion he doesn't have by assuming he'd wait for them to turn 18. If he thought it would work, he'd march 5 year olds in bomb vests over the border then have Elon announce that Ukraine kills children.
I mean it's unlikely Putin lives another 16 years, so even if they're sending 15 year olds to the front this won't help the war machine
It's more about long-term population loss. There's a reason combined-arms forces are used and mass infantry assaults are not. Problem is, Russian military hardware sucks for a lot of different and systemic reasons so that option isn't realistic over a large theater.
Putin is straight up bleeding Russia out and it's really sad that this many people are displaced and dying over one man's ego and lust for his station.
The hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die liberty will never perish.
I wonder if women will start getting medals for babies, like soviet times? Another question, if these women are raising 8 kids, and all the men are dead in a sunflower field south of Avdivika, who the hell is supposed to be working in Russia for the next generation? Just banking on enslaving Ukraine to pay for the cost of enslaving Ukraine?
Absolutely, and they pretty much have to commit to that plan at this point.
Before their losses started piling up the way they have been, I'd assumed his plan was to install a puppet government and "annex" useful provences into the Soviet Union Russian federation.
But with the population losses that require women to become livestock for the sake of the country, he's absolutely going to enslave able bodied workers in every region he's able to hold onto.
All you gotta do is excuse people from military service for being a parent. Pretty soon all military aged males will be parents and you’ll greatly reduce the number of deaths in Ukraine. Win-win
That's actually pretty brilliant. Although it would also grind new recruits to a halt. It's almost like he should retreat and take the L and try rebuilding
All you gotta do is excuse people from military service for being a parent. Pretty soon all military aged males will be parents and you’ll greatly reduce the number of deaths in Ukraine. Win-win
Sorta kinda exists, but you need at least 4 children below 18 years. But I don't think this increases amount of military aged males or any doctors being parents.
He's probably yearning for the Russian Empire instead of Soviet Union.
Russian governmental officials have some really outlandish views for an average Russian person.
They're very religious, believe in conspiracies, actively anti-lgbt, don't support abortions, antisemitic to name a few. None of these qualities are present in the general masses. They are in their own informational bubble.
As far as I understand it, he believes that the Russian Empire and collective Europe were always at each other's throats, and that never changed for over 200 years. At the same time, Russia is a successor of the Russian Empire, and USSR is being omitted for some reason. That's the simplistic explanation of it.
For you to understand how crazy that is, Russians (in general) have little to no idea of how the Empire worked and what the views those people held. USSR essentially wiped out all of that culture.
Not Hitler, not even close. Im not allowing what he did nor defending him, but what Hitler did compared with Putin is major difference. It does not change the fact that both of them deserve a special place in hell
That's why even if Russia wins the war or got some concessions, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. They're already experiencing population decline because of massive emigration aside from lower birth rate (which is why Putin is paying lip service to the conservative religious Russians to promote more birth, and in turn endeared him to conservatives across the world). The war will add to the burden of the Russian people on top of corruption and debt after the conflict.
They need the dogma of out breeding the competition so they can maintain a labor class without giving up any of the hoarded resources.
No sane people want to breed in our current conditions anywhere, so gotta make them insane with promises of eternal hurrdurr if only you crank out babies for God.
If this is true, this has to be the ultimate way of not really dealing with the population crisis upon us. Not saying any government is doing a great job here as they are all beating around the bush and not addressing root causes, but this one from Putin has to be the most delusional of them all.
There is no population crisis, unless you mean there are too many people. Most of the work we do is entirely unnecessary and only exists to help billionaires become trillionaires. At least that's the case in countries that don't need meat to throw in front of bullets.
Necessary jobs are mostly farming, mining, manufacturing, and customer service. The first two have already been automated to need only a tiny percentage of the workforce they once require. Manufacturing is mostly there as well, and is getting closer all the time. Customer service still employs a lot of humans, but even those jobs are being replaced or augmented with physical or logical bots.
The crisis is that without enough babies, there will not be enough young people to support the older people. It is why places like Canada have such high immigration as it offsets the lack of births from Canadian citizens. Now, it is a crisis from a planet health perspective. No. It is the best thing that could happen right now as we really could use less people and their associated carbon emissions, but it will still impact the economy hard especially since it is becoming a steep birth rate decline in so many countries. Feels like a free fall right now and to address is going to take as much change as it will take to fix the climate emergency. Might even have some of the same solutions.
Mother Heroine (Russian: Мать-героиня, Mat'-geroinya) is an honorary title that was used in the Soviet Union and now Russia, awarded for bearing and raising a large family.
On 15 August 2022 Vladimir Putin signed a decree reviving the honorary title.[2]
Also Putins intent is to turn Russia back into the Soviet Union so it's not at all surprising he's re-using things like this.
Maybe he doesn't realize it'll take a couple decades, and he'll be dead by then, for any women having children now to see them old enough to fight or have any impact on the country
Or he firmly believes his successor (whenever that happens) will glorify him as a savior of some sort and be left with a glorious country, full of opportunities for the young adults. Delusions are free, just like dreams
I mean, with Russia, it seems like it's just been constant: WW1, revolution, WW2, Stalin's reign, now this.
If anything, rather than WW2 and this being "in a row", that time frame includes probably the biggest gap in the past century without a grievous population loss.
For as much as we (Americans) regard Russia (as a state) with an adversarial eye, as far as Russians (the actual common people) are concerned, I kinda feel for them. Seems like their entire history is dominated by difficulty, hardship, and death.
Then again maybe that impression is precisely the impression that the American education system has very carefully cultivated...
The problem is under a dictatorship no one can really tell you things are bad, until that problem boils over into another generals line of authority.
Which for Russia, they are finding out, that even if they win this war, they will have to scale down production because they won't have the manpower for that production in 20 years
Which means even if they can hold Crimea, they won't have the production to work Crimea as well as the Ukrainians.
It's not a problem. When us women have the resources to be able to educate ourselves in the realities of the bull shit that's been peddled to us, we stop being brood mares.
2016-2020s really feels like the greatest hits of the crises of the 20th century. I guess the last ww2 vet dies and everyone decides to forget everything.
He is 71 right now. He would be pushing 90 in '42. If he internalizes his inner Kissinger to live to 100, he can replay the "Great Patriotic War" of '45.
A bit of a dark shower thought, but wouldn't this whole terrible situation really, really benefit China who has a larger male to female population as a whole?
Addressing the World Russian People's Council in Moscow on Tuesday, Putin said the country must return to a time when large families were the norm.
Putin's remarks come amid decades of falling birth rates in Russia that its invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent economic fallout have only made worse.
In October, the UK's Ministry of Defence reported that Russia has likely amassed up to 290,000 killed or wounded soldiers in the war against Ukraine.
Since coming into power 24 years ago, Putin has tried to boost Russia's birthrate by introducing a range of government incentives for those who have children, including payouts for families who have more than one child.
But the measures have had little to no impact, with figures from Rosstat, Russia's federal-statistics service, putting the Russian population at 146,447,424 as of January 1, lower than it was in 1999 when Putin first became president, Le Monde reported.
"Russia lacks workers," Alexei Raksha, a demographer who previously worked at Rosstat, told AFP in February.
The original article contains 409 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 59%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Ordinary Western and US propaganda - no matter what Putin may do, it's a sign of his weakness. Whether he eats ice cream, smiles, fucks women, sleeps, urges the women to give birth to more children, washes his teeth or itches his left shoulder -- it's a proof that he's weak.
In reality, he's ever stronger and supported by the russians -- thanks to none other than the West and US.
Yeah the media have a tendency to exaggerate his flaws but this isn't a well thought out move, it's probably a mix of that white birther thing musk is into and general desperation at the industrial and military problems he faces.
The reality is Russia is not doing well economically, Russian families can't afford to bring up eight kids even in the poverty conditions they're getting increasingly used to. The Russian state can't afford even the shitty education kids get now so it's certainly not going to cope if there was a sudden baby boom.
This isn't a well thought out economic, social, or moral plan so what else is it beside foolish bluster and weak minded desperation?