Russian President Vladimir Putin has been focused on dealing with Russia’s demographic crisis from his first day on the job, but the population is still shrinking slowly. Now he is having another pushed at boosting the numbers and promoting “fatherhood” amongst Russians.

Putin put dealing with Russia’s demographic problem at the core of his presidency and he is still working on it 20 years later. In his first state of the nation speech in 2000 he highlighted demographics as the number one priority.

A demographic crisis that will take Emerging Europe population levels back to the early 20^th century is a problem for everyone in Europe, but no where is it as bad as in Ukraine. Ukraine has the worst demographics in the world by a long chalk. The country’s post-war economic future depends heavily on persuading the millions that fled the war returning home and once there having a lot more babies; eight out of ten refugees are women.

In Russia the problems are bad, but not that bad. The Mother and Child reforms instituted by the Kremlin in 2006 have been a stunning success easily outperforming even the most optimistic predictions. However, it did not solve the problem. The size of the population began to decline again in 2018 and the coronacrisis has also kept migrants at home, making the problem even worse. The demographic dent put in the population pyramid by the chaos of the 90s and the collapse of life expectancies was very deep indeed. Putin’s Mother and Child programme was only going to mitigate the problem, but it was never going to solve it.

Russian fatherhood

Now Putin is renewing the effort. He called for a nationwide shift towards more active fatherhood as part of a wider strategy to address the country’s ongoing demographic crisis that will take Emerging Europe population levels back to the early 20^th century in 2026. Speaking at a meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects on December 9, Putin said new measures were needed to promote “responsible fatherhood” alongside existing support for mothers.

“The family is based on mutual respect, on the participation of both parents in raising children,” Putin said. “Therefore, alongside supporting motherhood, we need to think through measures to support responsible fatherhood.”

He added that men should take a greater role in everyday family care, in decisions about having children, and in their upbringing. Responsible fatherhood, according to Putin, also involves leading a healthy lifestyle and maintaining reproductive health.

Putin said the state must focus on system-wide support for families, describing the demographic agenda as a long-term national priority. “We need a broader, more long-term approach,” he said, noting that the current trend could not be reversed by short-term initiatives alone.

According to data from the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), Russia recorded 1.222mn births in 2024, the lowest figure since 1999. The number represents a one-third decline from 2014 and reflects a global trend in both developed and developing countries towards sub-replacement fertility rates.

To counter the decline, Russia has introduced a number of incentives, including lump-sum payments at childbirth, extended maternity benefits, and regular financial support for families with children. The government has also revived the Soviet-era “Mother Heroine” title, which includes a cash award for women with more than ten children.

Additional proposals have included tax breaks for larger families and restrictions on promoting “child-free” lifestyles in media and public discourse.

Putin has previously linked the issue to broader social and economic factors, urging improvements in housing, employment and healthcare to make parenting a more attractive and sustainable choice. In June, he endorsed the creation of a national family support service, and in 2023, he established a presidential council on family and demographic policy.

Ukraine worst in the world

Ukraine’s population collapsed to 29mn souls in 2023 with just 187,000 births recorded (including in Russian-occupied territories). This is the lowest annual figure in recorded history over the last 300 years, exacerbating an already dire population catastrophe facilitated by economic turmoil and war.

Ukraine has both the highest mortality rate and the lowest birth rate in the world, according to the CIA: deaths outnumber births by three to one.

That is already causing a catastrophic crash in the population size, which could halve from current levels to a mere 15mn by 2100, according to the UN forecasts and down from its pre-war level of 45mn.

“The popular TV ad of the early 90s "We are 52mn" used to be part of the identity of Ukrainians of my generation. Now even the most optimistic scenarios predict twice as few. "Towards the abyss" visualised,” Volodymyr Ishchenko, a research associate at the Institute of East European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Ukraine was already in trouble before the fighting started. The pre-war 45mn headcount was already controversial as Ukraine has not held a formal census since 2000. As the poorest country in Europe, a fifth of the labour force had already left to seek better paid jobs in the EU and Russia. On top of that the fertility rate in 2022 was 1.4 births per woman -- well below the replacement rate. Ukraine’s post-war recovery efforts will depend heavily on how many of the circa 6mn war-refugees are willing to return home – and the prospects for that are poor.

An earlier study by the UN 2022 said that Ukraine will never fully regain the population lost to death and mass displacement since Russia’s invasion in 2022. The UN Population Prospects projections indicate that while the country’s population will recover to some extent from 2023 onwards – assuming the war ends within months – it will never again reach the 43.3mn seen at the beginning of 2022.