President Vladimir Putin is desperate for Russian women to have more babies. Though abortion remains legal nationally, Russian authorities have waged war against it, banning "child-free" advocacy, pressuring private clinics to stop performing abortions and subjecting women seeking them to waiting periods and counseling. Now the Russian president has opened a new front: the search bar.
On Monday, Putin ordered the government to develop proposals that will ensure search engines prioritize pregnancy support websites when users search for abortion services. Unfortunately, resources earmarked for helping women to cultivate new life are being drained by the Kremlin’s focus on taking it across the border. Moscow is throwing more than a third of its next federal budget on defense, while regional healthcare spending falls and social payments face delays.
In Putin's Russia, your body is his business, but paying for your baby is up to you. Putin’s obsession with fertility is but a continuation of Russian history. In 1944, Josef Stalin introduced the Soviet "Mother Heroine" award for women who bore and raised at least 10 children, as the USSR sought to recover from catastrophic wartime losses.
Putin resurrected the title in August 2022. Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in September, the Russian president openly declared low fertility one of Russia’s greatest national security threats. That might seem like an overreaction given the number of Ukrainian drones soaring into Russian airspace every night, but his logic is sound.
Russia's exact fertility rate is no longer published by federal statistics service Rosstat, but Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova in August revealed the number was 1.352—far below the 2.1 needed for population replacement. Researchers estimate only 1.19 million babies were born in 2025, a post-Soviet low, and Russian demographers expect the population to shrink from 146 million in early 2025 to about 141 million by 2036, even as the labor ministry says Russia needs 3.1 million additional workers by 2030. The Kremlin is attacking the problem from both sides.
In 2025, the government launched a national project called "Family," which brought maternity grants, subsidized mortgages and child benefits under one umbrella. Eligible families can receive a payout of around 729,000 rubles ($9,000) toward housing, education and other approved expenses for their first child, and another 234,000 after a second. On paper, it is a serious attempt to help young Russians start and expand families.
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