Putin's solution to increase Russia's population: Ask women to have ‘8 or more’ children

Russian President Vladimir Putin this week urged women in Russia to have eight or more children and make larger families a “norm” to increase the population in the country. This comes amid the increasing number of deaths in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

In a video speech at the World Russian People's Council in Moscow, Putin said that boosting the population of the country will be the “goal for coming decades”, reported The Independent.

“Many of our peoples maintain the tradition of the family, where four, five or more children are raised…Recall that in Russian families our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had both 7 and 8 children. Let us preserve and revive these traditions. The family is not just the foundation of the state and society, it is a spiritual phenomenon, a source of morality," he said.

Notably, Putin himself has publicly acknowledged having only two children - daughters with his former wife Lyudmila. However, reports have claimed that he has multiple children from his affairs with millionaire Svetlana Krivonogikh and Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Alina Kabaeva.

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Speaking further at the conference, Putin added: “I would like to emphasise that the Russian world and Russia itself do not and cannot exist without Russians as an ethnicity, without the Russian people. This statement does not contain any claim to superiority, exclusivity or chosenness. This is simply a fact just like our Constitution’s clear definition of the status of the Russian language as the language of a state-forming nation. Being Russian is more than a nationality.”

The war between Russia and Ukraine entered its second winter this year with thousands of people being killed and displaced every day. According to the UK's defence ministry, the number of Russians dead in the war has likely crossed 300,000, reported The Independent. Meanwhile, an independent Russian policy group claimed that around 820,000-920,000 have fled the country.