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17-02-2024
MOSCOW: Russian families must produce at least two children for the sake of the nation’s ethnic survival, and three or more if it is to develop and thrive, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
Russia has suffered heavy but undisclosed casualties since launching its war in Ukraine nearly two years ago, and hundreds of thousands of people have fled the country out of opposition to the conflict or fear of being called up to fight.
Putin told employees at a tank factory in the Urals region that two children per family was the minimum number if the peoples of Russia were to preserve their identities.
“If we want to survive as an ethnic group – well, or as ethnic groups inhabiting Russia there must be at least two children,” he said.
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.”
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”.
Russia suffered two decades of gradual population decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union, exacerbated by chronic problems such as alcoholism.
The state statistics bureau estimated, opens new tab the population at 146.4 million at the start of 2023, down from nearly 149 million 20 years earlier but up from a low of about 143 million between 2007 and 2012.
Last year, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that LGBT activists should be designated as extremists, in a move that representatives of gay and transgender people fear will lead to arrests and prosecutions.
A journalist in court heard it announce that it had approved a request from the justice ministry to recognize what it called “the international LGBT social movement” as extremist and to ban its activities.
The move is part of a pattern of increasing restrictions in Russia on expressions of sexual orientation and gender identity, including laws outlawing the promotion of “non-traditional” sexual relations and banning legal or medical changes of gender.
President Vladimir Putin, expected shortly to announce that he will seek a new six-year term in March, has long sought to promote an image of Russia as a guardian of traditional moral values in contrast with a decadent West.
In a speech last year, he said the West was welcome to adopt “rather strange, in my view, new-fangled trends like dozens of genders, and gay parades” but had no right to impose them on other countries.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters before the court decision was announced that the Kremlin was “not following” the case and had no comment on it.
The Supreme Court took around five hours to issue its ruling, after opening its session at 10 a.m. (0700 GMT). The proceedings were closed to media, but reporters were allowed in to hear the decision. (Int’l News Desk)
