2024-02-15T19:39:05+00:00
A-
A
A+
/ Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Thursday for Russian families to have at least two children in order to preserve the nation’s ethnic identity and to have three or more in order for the country to grow and prosper.
“Two children per family is the minimum if the population of Russia wants to preserve its identity,” Putin told employees at a tank plant in the Urals. “If we want to survive as an ethnic group, or as ethnic groups that inhabit Russia, we need at least two children.”
He continued: “If each family had only one child, the population would shrink… and for development and growth, you need at least three children.”
Russia has suffered two decades of gradual population decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and since it launched its war on Ukraine nearly two years ago, Russia has suffered significant but undisclosed human losses, with hundreds of thousands fleeing because of opposition to the conflict or fear of being called up to fight.
The Russian statistics office estimated that Russia’s population reached 146.4 million people at the beginning of 2023, down from about 149 million people 20 years ago, but up from 143 million between 2007 and 2012.