Russian women who don’t want children will be sent to psychologist

LONDON, March 20 — Russian women who do not want to have children will be referred to psychologists under new health ministry guidelines that were drawn up after the Kremlin outlawed what it called the “ideology of childlessness”. Russia faces a deepening demographic crisis that has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Under the updated guidelines for reproductive health checks, doctors in Russia will ask women how many children they plan to have. If a woman replies that she does not intend to give birth, “it is recommended to send the patient to a consultation with a medical psychologist with the goal of forming a positive attitude towards having children”. The recommendation does not apply to men who have no desire to have children.

Putin revives Mother Heroine award for women who have ten children

In 2024 there were 600,000 more deaths than births in Russia and birth rates fell to their lowest since President Putin came to power in 2000, according to Rosstat, the state statistics service. The current population is 146 million, according to official figures that some analysts suspect have been inflated. Forecasts suggest the country’s population could fall to 90 million or less by the end of the century.

Last year Alexei Raksha, an independent demographer who has been designated a “foreign agent” by the Kremlin, said the number of births in the first three months of 2025 was likely to have been the lowest in Russia for 200 years. Rosstat has since restricted access to the majority of demographic data in an apparent bid to hide the worsening situation. In December 2024 Putin signed a law that made it illegal to promote the idea that there could be anything positive about a child-free lifestyle. The Kremlin says “child-free ideology” was imported from the West and is a danger to Russia’s future and that Putin is “haunted” by the country’s demographic crisis. Previous attempts to plug Russia’s demographic hole by making abortions harder to access , promoting “traditional values” and offering payments for women who have more than two children have so far failed to have an impact on birth rates.

The war in Ukraine has created thousands of young widows across Russia

Some Russian regions have also made one-off payments of 100,000 roubles (£870) to pregnant schoolgirls. Officials said the move was aimed at boosting birth rates and providing social support to vulnerable teenagers. In another move to encourage marriage and a higher birth rate, more than 100 schools, colleges and universities have organised visits to register offices for schoolchildren and students. The excursions have included mock weddings between children. At least two nurseries were involved.

In the southern region of Saratov, two tenth-graders, aged between 15 and 16, exchanged rings and signed a marriage certificate, according to Vyorstka, a Russian opposition website. Putin raised eyebrows in December when he praised “the very good tradition” of teenage marriages in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim region in southern Russia. “They marry off their children at a fairly early age. This is truly the right thing to do. We should follow their example,” Putin said. He singled out the family of Ramzan Kadyrov, the ruthless Chechen leader , as a role model. Kadyrov’s sons are all reported to have married at the age of 17. One of their wives is believed to have been 14 at the time of the wedding. The legal age of marriage in Russia is 18.

There was an international outcry in 2015 when a girl who had just turned 17 was forced to marry a Chechen police chief at least 30 years older than her. Nazhud Guchigov , who was already married, had was said to have threatened the girl’s parents if they did not consent to the marriage, which was attended by Kadyrov. Polygamy is illegal in Russia.

Despite its falling population, Russia plans to ship in almost 114,000 of its own citizens to occupied areas of eastern and southern Ukraine in the coming year, a report by Vedomosti, a Russian newspaper, said. Ukrainian media accused Moscow of seeking to “colonise” the regions.

Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, a Kremlin official, are wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of illegally deporting thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia or areas in Ukraine under Moscow’s control. A UN inquiry said last week that the deportations were a crime against humanity and that Putin’s personal involvement was “visible from the outset”.