The Kremlin wants Russian women to have more babies (Image: Getty)
The Kremlin is desperately trying to get Russians to have more babies to combat a declining birth rate.
currently has a population of 144 million people. However, it has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.
According to 2022 data, Russian women on average gave birth to 1.42 children, well below the 2.1 target needed to maintain its population.
Rosstat, ‘s official statistics agency, has also predicted the population could fall to 130 million by 2046 due to the double whammy of declining immigration and low birth rates.
Putin has urged women to have more babies (Image: Getty)
Russian officials have already considered creating a “ministry of sex” to encourage families to have more babies.
Young female students aged between 18 to 23 are also being targeted to have children through financial inducements.
Now in the latest scheme to boost the population, residents of the Nizhny Novgorod region are to receive payments of one million roubles (£7,742) for each child they have.
The maternity payments will be funded jointly by the Federal government and regional authorities.
In February Putin told workers at a tank factory in the Urals that Russian families had to have at least two children to ensure the nation’s ethnic survival.
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“If we want to survive as an ethnic group – well, or as ethnic groups inhabiting – there must be at least two children,” he said.
He noted that if each family had just one child, the population would shrink before adding: “And in order to expand and develop, you need at least three children.”
Putin declares himself a supporter of “traditional values” based on family, nation and the Orthodox Christian faith.
In the course of his 24 years in power, the country has severely restricted expressions of sexual orientation and gender identity and banned the “LGBT movement” as “extremist”.