For a quarter century, President Vladimir Putin has faced the specter of Russia’s shrinking and aging population.

In 1999, a year before he came to power, the number of babies born in Russia fell to the lowest level on record. In 2005, Putin said demographic problems needed to be resolved while maintaining “social and economic stability.”

In 2019, he said the problem was still “dogging” the country.

As recently as Thursday, he told a demographic conference in the Kremlin that increasing births was “crucial” for Russia.

Putin has launched initiatives to encourage people to have more children, from free school meals for large families to awarding Soviet-style “mother-hero” medals to women with 10 or more children.

“Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight and even more children,” Putin said in 2023. “Let us preserve and revive these wonderful traditions. Having many children and a large family must become the norm.”

At first, births in Russia grew with its economic prosperity, from 1.21 million babies born in 1999 to 1.94 million in 2015.

But those hard-won gains are unraveling against a backdrop of financial uncertainty, war in Ukraine, an exodus of young men and opposition to immigration.

Russia’s population has fallen from 147.6 million in 1990 (the year before the collapse of the USSR) to 146.1 million this year, according to Russia’s Federal Statistics Service. Since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, it has included the peninsula’s population of about 2 million, as well as births and deaths there, in its data.

The population is also significantly older. In 1990, 21.1% were 55 years old or older, according to government data. In 2024, that figure was 30%.

Since the 2015 peak, the number of births has fallen annually and deaths are now outpacing births. Last year there were only 1.22 million live births, slightly above the 1999 low. Demographer Alexei Raksha reported that the number of babies born in Russia in February 2025 was the lowest monthly figure in more than two centuries.

Russia is testing new restrictions to stop the backsliding and embrace what it calls “traditional family values” with laws banning the promotion of abortion and “child-free ideology” and banning all LGBTQ+ activism.

Officials believe those values ​​are “a magic wand” to solve demographic problems, said Russian feminist scholar Sasha Talaver.

In the government’s view, women can be financially independent, but they should be “willing and very enthusiastic to take on this additional reproductive work in the name of Russian patriotism and strength,” she said.

In Russia, as in much of the West, birth declines are often linked to economic turbulence. Young couples who live in cramped apartments, who cannot buy their own homes, or who fear for their jobs are often less confident that they can afford to raise a child.

But Russia is saddled with a tough demographic history.

About 27 million Soviet citizens died in World War II, dramatically decreasing the male population.

As the country began to recover, the Soviet Union collapsed and births fell again.

The number of Russian women in their 20s and 30s is small, said Jenny Mathers of Aberystwyth University in Wales, leaving authorities “desperate to get as many babies as possible out of this much smaller number of women.”

Although Russia has not said how many soldiers have been killed in Ukraine, Western estimates put the death toll in the hundreds of thousands. When the war began, many young Russians moved abroad, some for ideological reasons, such as escaping repression against dissent or avoiding military service.

“We have a very small pool of potential fathers in a very small pool of potential mothers,” Mathers said. That’s a particular problem for Putin, who has long linked population and national security, he said.

Some family-friendly initiatives are popular, such as cash certificates for parents that can go toward pensions, education or a subsidized mortgage.

Others are controversial, such as one-time payments of around $1,200 for pregnant teens in some regions. Authorities say they aim to support vulnerable mothers, but critics say they encourage such pregnancies.

Other programs seem mostly symbolic. Since 2022, Russia has created state holidays such as the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity in July, and Pregnant Women’s Day, which is celebrated on April 7 and October 7.

Last year, Russia’s fertility rate (the average number of children born per woman) was 1.4, state media reported. That’s well below the population replacement rate of 2.1 and slightly below the U.S. figure of 1.6 published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some regions have laws prohibiting “promoting abortions,” while national legislation in 2024 banned the promotion of “childless propaganda.” The wording of these types of initiatives is often vague, leaving them open to interpretation, but the change was enough for the producers of the reality show “16 and Pregnant” to change the name of the show to “Mommy at 16.”

For many women, the measures already make delicate conversations even more tense. A 29-year-old woman who decided not to have children told The Associated Press that she consults a gynecologist at a private clinic in Moscow, rather than a state-run one, to avoid intrusive questions.

“Whether I plan to have children or not, they don’t ask me about that at all,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she feared repercussions. It’s “a completely different story” at state clinics, he said.

A growing number of laws limit access to abortion. While the procedure remains legal and widely available, more and more private clinics no longer offer abortion services. The new legislation has also stopped the sale of abortion pills, a measure that also affects some emergency contraceptives.

Women are encouraged to go to state clinics, where waits are longer and some sites refuse to perform abortions on certain days. When patients have completed mandatory counseling and mandatory waiting periods of between 48 hours and one week, they are at risk of exceeding the deadline for a legal abortion.

Abortions have steadily declined under these laws, although experts say the number of procedures was already declining. Still, there has been no corresponding increase in births and activists believe that restricting abortion will only harm the health of women and children.

“The only thing this will achieve will be illegal abortions. That means more deaths: more deaths of children and more deaths of women,” says Russian journalist and feminist activist Zalina Marshenkulova.

She sees the government’s new limits as repression for the sake of repression. “They exist only to prohibit, to block any voice of freedom,” he told the AP.

Russia could increase its population by allowing more immigrants, something the Kremlin is unlikely to adopt.

Russian officials have recently fueled anti-immigrant sentiment, tracking their movements, clamping down on their employment and preventing their children’s right to education. Central Asians who have traditionally traveled to Russia for work are looking elsewhere, hoping to avoid growing discrimination and economic uncertainty.

As the war in Ukraine continues, Moscow can promise financial rewards for future parents, but not the stability needed to bet on the future.

When people don’t have confidence in their prospects, it’s not the time to have children, Mathers said, adding: “A big open war doesn’t really encourage people to think positively about the future.”

The 29-year-old woman who chose not to have children agrees.

“The happiest and healthiest child will only be born in a family with healthy and happy parents,” he said.