Russians are starting to get frustrated with President Vladimir Putin as he continues to urge them to have more babies.
Having already told Russians to have bigger families, Putin yet again said on Wednesday that “a large, large family” is needed to help boost the population.
His regime is also planning to implement a sex-at-work scheme, according to reports.
The policy is reportedly aimed at helping men and women who say they are too tired after work to have sex.
A Russian doctor told the country: “You can engage in procreation during breaks, because life flies by too quickly.”
Speaking to the Daily Express, Putin’s former speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov said that Russians are becoming “irritated” as “they don’t like politicising the issue of babies.”
Mr Gallyamov, who served as the Russian President’s speechwriter between 2008 and 2012, said: “For Putin, the purpose of existence is expansion. He considers himself the ‘chief Russian’, so under his leadership the Russians should expand. Both – from the point of view of territory and the point of view of population.
“It really irritates the majority of Russians, except the old ones, that the authorities are trying to regulate their family life. They don’t like politicising the issue of babies, they consider it their private matter.
“For many years already the Russian government has been paying people for having extra babies and providing them with additional benefits of different kind.”
Lada Shamardina, a Russian journalist for the independent medical publication Medivestnik, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that many women in Russia find the language “upsetting” when they are urged to have more babies.
She added: “I think the main problem is that people in Russia, and most of the women in Russia, do not have trust in our government. All of these topics are very intimate … and I think women are scared to open up this information to the government.”
Statistics from Rosstat show how Russia could be heading for a population crisis.
Only 599,600 children were born in Russia in the first half of 2024 — 16,000 fewer than in the same period last year and the lowest since 1999.
In February, Putin told Russians that families need three children to help “expand” the population.
He said: “If we want to survive as an ethnic group – well, or as ethnic groups inhabiting Russia – there must be at least two children.
“If each family had just one child, the population would shrink”, he said. “And in order to expand and develop, you need at least three children.”
